sc4pac syncing between machines

[solidus 5]

Hi all,

I frequently switch back and forth between 2 PCs to play SC4. I upload my regions to GDrive and download them before I play. In addition I have been using sc4pac to manage all of my mods and plugins. My question is, if I have sc4pac installed on both machines, will I be able to also share my Plugins folder to Gdrive and download it to my other machine before playing? Specifically, what happens if I get some new plugins using sc4pac on one machine, then upload the resulting Plugins folder to use on my other machine. If I just drop the Plugins folder into the Documents directory, will sc4pac recognize the new addons from the folder automatically and be able to track/update them? Simply put, do the mods need to be added from sc4pac originally or does it effectively scan your plugins folder to find anything new added since it last ran?

[memo 1,479]

Interesting question. Sc4pac does not scan your Plugins to see what you have installed, as that would be very slow for many operations. Instead, it treats the profile configuration folder as "input" (the source-of-truth of what's installed) and treats the files in your Plugins folder as "output" of the program. (The only time it scans your plugins is when you press the Maintenance&Repair button to check whether anything in your Plugins is out of sync with your Profile. If so, it updates the files in your Plugins folder to restore them to the state of your Profile – not the other way around – so this doesn't solve your problem.)

The simplest approach is to install sc4pac only on one PC, and sync only the Plugins folder to the other PC. To install or uninstall any packages, you'd have to switch to the PC with sc4pac and then resync your Plugins.

If you want to use sc4pac on both PCs, this can be done as follows:

• Sync your Plugins folder.
• The absolute path to the Plugins folder must be the same on both PCs. (Otherwise, you could try relative paths or symbolic links – not impossible, but more complicated.) Hence, the default location should work as long as your username is the same on both PCs.
• Also sync your Profiles configuration folder. If necessary, you can change the location of the Profiles configuration folder by setting the user environment variable "SC4PAC_PROFILES_DIR". See for example the file "cli/sc4pac.bat". Move the existing Profile configuration folder to the new location manually.

[solidus 5]

5 minutes ago, memo said:

Interesting question. Sc4pac does not scan your Plugins to see what you have installed, as that would be very slow for many operations. Instead, it treats the profile configuration folder as "input" (the source-of-truth of what's installed) and treats the files in your Plugins folder as "output" of the program. (The only time it scans your plugins is when you press the Maintenance&Repair button to check whether anything in your Plugins is out of sync with your Profile. If so, it updates the files in your Plugins folder to restore them to the state of your Profile – not the other way around – so this doesn't solve your problem.)

The simplest approach is to install sc4pac only on one PC, and sync only the Plugins folder to the other PC. To install or uninstall any packages, you'd have to switch to the PC with sc4pac and then resync your Plugins.

If you want to use sc4pac on both PCs, this can be done as follows:

• Sync your Plugins folder.
• The absolute path to the Plugins folder must be the same on both PCs. (Otherwise, you could try relative paths or symbolic links – not impossible, but more complicated.) Hence, the default location should work as long as your username is the same on both PCs.
• Also sync your Profiles configuration folder. If necessary, you can change the location of the Profiles configuration folder by setting the user environment variable "SC4PAC_PROFILES_DIR". See for example the file "cli/sc4pac.bat". Move the existing Profile configuration folder to the new location manually.

This is really helpful. Honestly I play on one machine mostly so I think the best path is just to use my main PC to run sc4pac and then upload the plugins folder to GDrive at the end of my session. Then I can just download the folder on my alternate machine and use it manually without sc4pac.

This actually reminds me of another issue I have. How in the world do I use sc4pac to manage multiple plugin sets for different regions? I thought I would be able to have multiple plugins folders and just create a profile for each region, pointing to a specific folder... but sc4pac complains when I try to do that saying that the folder needs to be called Plugins. So what is the correct way to setup a scenario where all of my base mods (NAM, sc4fix, etc) are available for all regions, but manage specific mods like buildings and other things at a region level so that I dont have buildings sprouting up in regions that I do not want them?

[memo 1,479]

Sc4pac doesn't hook up your Plugins folder to the game. It just installs files into any folder you choose. To make the game load Plugins from a non-standard location, you'd use the -UserDir launch parameter of the game. For this to be possible, the folder should be named "Plugins", and the Plugins folders of different Profiles must be completely separate from each other to avoid conflicts between Profiles.

If you want to share a set of packages between different Profiles, create your own collection package by writing a .yaml text file containing a dependency list of packages to use in all Profiles. For more details, see the explanation in this post.

[solidus 5]

7 hours ago, memo said:

Sc4pac doesn't hook up your Plugins folder to the game. It just installs files into any folder you choose. To make the game load Plugins from a non-standard location, you'd use the -UserDir launch parameter of the game. For this to be possible, the folder should be named "Plugins", and the Plugins folders of different Profiles must be completely separate from each other to avoid conflicts between Profiles.

If you want to share a set of packages between different Profiles, create your own collection package by writing a .yaml text file containing a dependency list of packages to use in all Profiles. For more details, see the explanation in this post.

Ok I see. So is the easiest way to have a Plugin folder per region to name them something like Plugins_NY, Plugins_London, etc and then rename before playing to Plugins? Then just hook up the different sc4pac profiles to the folders with the _regionname suffix so that they install to their correct locations?

[Lab Rat 16]

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