If you installed the Help Update, be aware that you now have an extra cached (yes, duplicate!) 343 MB worth of data in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\{15EDF4CD-698A-4E52-8278-2E25143AD95B} (change to wherever you have your user profiles and I don't know where that is in Vista, but if you scan your HDD for the folder named {15EDF4CD-698A-4E52-8278-2E25143AD95B}, you should find out easy!
Yep, that's CG again thinking that they ought to know better than us, developers, and treating us like "dumb users" and caching stuff without even asking for our consent...
For those thinking "when will this guy stop complaining about this?": you know the answer! When CG stops DOING it! :) I can understand some lack of choices for "normal" software, where the users may need to be protected of themselves, but as a developer, I like to be in control of my machine, rather than have it control me, or in this case, rather than have software waste disk space for no good reason other than because someone was lazy when creating the installer...
Sure, disk space is cheap, but what happens when you try to BACKUP that "cheap" disk space? You're left with no other choice than backing up to ANOTHER disk which has huge drawbacks such as now allowing you to (easily) keep a backup outside your installation so you can quickly recover from a building fire or something... And most 1-man shops just can't afford a fire-proof vault that can keep data backups safe because those things are just too expensive, not to mention bulky and heavy...
EDIT (for those that don't read the comments!): Chris Pattinson, from CodeGear, warns about not being able to run future help patches and needing a full re-install should you delete this folder, so, you can do two things if you still need the space:
1) Back up the folder to a CD/other disk prior to removing it;
2) If you have already deleted the folder, simply install on a Virtual Machine and copy the folder from there. Or, should you have multiple machines with Delphi 2007, just copy the folder from another one. As long as it's added to the same place, you should be fine.
8 comments:
And the cheap price of disk space is not an argument - at least for those who use laptops - if you have, e.g., 80GB of disk space, then you are allowed to be angry, when someone WASTES 0.5% of it, especially if there is no good reason for that wasting.
Codegear, please change this, or at least, make this optional!
These are the kind of posts that definitely kill the blogosphere. I may agree with the help b@tching, and some other tweaks, but for the installer keeping 300 MB, geesh, if you as a "guru" developer can get rid off it, why r u complaining? As you mention, you as a cool developer can't be fool by CG, aight great, go and delete that stuff, and keep complaining about something more useful.
@anon: the thing is, anon, that even this "guru" developer initially missed that space left, simply because it didn't occur to him that an help update would cache it's files ELSEWHERE other than in the main cache folder for the product it is updating...
Since I only noticed that space today, that's why I'm "b*tching" a bit: after all, is it really THAT hard for CG to do things the proper way? And if we all do as you would probably prefer and stay quiet and don't "b*tch", how will they know about it? Certainly not by adding QC reports as those either get ignored or dismissed with "working as intended"...
Hey, I wouldn't even mind, if only the new Help was any better... :(
Well, it *is* better, just not quite there yet... At this rate, maybe 2008's xmas will bring us all Delphi users a nice gift: the promised "improved help"! :)
They're definitely improving it, but there's so much more to do...
Chris Patterson from CodeGear writes:
Don't do this. You need these files for patching, the next update which
is coming very soon will need these files.
We are looking at several strategies to deal with this cache of files
to save room, however you'll shoot yourself in the foot in playing with
these directories and likely need to do a full re-install to apply
future patches.
--
Chris Pattinson
CodeGear QA Manager, Delphi/C++ Developer Studio
Thanks for the info, Chris, but at the moment, the 343 MB mean more to me than being able to patch it up again. And I can always install that on a VM, then copy that folder back to my main machine and patch whatever needs to be patched. A bit more work? Yes, but keeping my C: drive at a size that I can back it up and restore to a working condition in under 10 minutes is more important for me than spending a few extra minutes if and when a help patch comes along that is worth applying.
Thanks for the update anyway.
This is an outdated post, but partially, as I am testing Delphi 2009 and the "problem" is still there, even bigger.
Some people say "Why worry, if it's not so important?" The answer depends on who are you, what's your job, how you do it, and if you want to do it better.
Yesterday, I took my installation cd/dvd, installed the app, and then saved the disk in my shelf. Cost for my PC: exactly 0 Mb, 0 files of backup. The backup is on the shelf. Now I need to reinstall or update? I insert again it in my cd/dvd reader, and go on. Cost: Again zero. In the worst case, the cost of a MessageBox saying "Please insert Rad Developer 2009 install disk".
Today, however, my pc must always carry inside this asleep elephant: 884 Mb in 10076 files... "Shelfs" must be an outdated concept, sorry, I didn't notice. The state-of-the-art in IT is carrying the shelf inside the computer...
Wasting should never be your way of doing things, even if your hard disk is big and empty. No one would say that wasting is "not important", as it leads to global disaster when many people also thinks like that.
Probably you have money enough to afford keeping your house faucets turned on all day long, so you haven't to turn them on and off each time you use them. Who cares about wasting, say 300L of water, when the world has billions liters, so it's only a 0.00...01%. Will you do it, or will you "complain" as Fernando?
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