plugin loading

Obsolete Plugin Cleanup

It would be excellent if there was a little utility app, independent of kinemecore probably (but this wouldn't be bad with kinemecore too), that would go and "cleanup" old plugins like structure tools, directory scanner blocking, spooky, gl tools during the alpha port function era, etc., that have been made obsolete by new plugins/have been lumped in with new plugins. Like, how Kinemecore checks for duplicate versions/older versions of a given plugin, or locations being in the wrong place.

I realize that something like that would have to have a static list of some outdated plugins inside the app and patches that replace them, that would be maintained, and that this could get into a pain. Maybe this would be best as an opensource thing where people could update that list themselves.

The purpose of it's being it's own utility app, script, or whatever, is so that someone wouldn't have to start up QC to do a "plugin management".

The "problem" scenario, is that, if you're loading an app that uses patches like Structure Maker or Directory Scanner Blocking that have been gobbled up by other patches over the years (DataTools, FileTools), and the user has them double installed - like, they have Structure Maker AND DataTools installed, not only does QC have problems on start, but it's pretty darn hard to figure out a way to keep your own app from crashing on start, or not initializing, because of the duplicates.

Maybe there's some eloquent way to handle this in the internals of an app, but I sure haven't found it - and I doubt there is in the case of duplicate plugins, when loading them from user, library, or system locations. I don't necessarily want to stop external loading of QCPatches altogether, but I guess that would be the alternative, to making it so the user doesn't have to jump through as many hoops. It just keeps them from using QCPatches installed on their system though (like QB does currently), which is sometimes not an advantage.