Modify DynamoSettings.xml at build to point to ProgramData/BHoM

[adecler]

Issues addressed by this PR

Closes #239

Now only copy the Dynamo toolkit specific dlls to Roaming and modifies DynamoSettings.xml to inlcude ProgramData/BHoM in the list of custom package folders.

Test files

After cleaning ALL your BHoM folders inside Dynamo/Roaming, and recompiling, make sure BHoM still works in Dynamo for all versions of core and revit.

[FraserGreenroyd]

I have followed the above but cannot get BHoM to show up in Dynamo sandbox or Dynamo Revit, I don't know if this is my machine to this PR so am holding off requesting changes yet.

I can confirm I can see the ProgramData link appear in the CustomPackageFolders of the XML files for each though, so that part has worked.

I also have a question, which may require more testing to confirm, which is whether we need a PR on the installer to remove installing the DLLs to Dynamo's folder if this PR works. I suspect we might need to test this PR without clearing the folders to see how it behaves as to whether the installer could update after this PR or not?

[adecler]

@FraserGreenroyd ,

• It only works for me on Dynamo Sandbox but I am on 2.3, not 2.0.
• The installer will have to clear the Dynamo folders, yes. For now, I deleted them manually.

Some extra tests I did right now:

• After deleting everything that is not a dll from the ProgramData/BHoM/Assemblies folder, it was still not working in Dynamo Revit.
• After copying those exact same dlls to Roaming\Dynamo\Dynamo Revit\2.0\packages\BHoM\bin it worked with some complains about some of the Revit dlls.
• With this new PR, Dynamo Revit 2.3 actually works (Revit 2020). So this might be that DynamoSettings.xml only works with 2.3 and above ?

[adecler]

This should now be resolved next quarter as it only partially solves the problem.

[pawelbaran]

@adecler is that something I could work in parallel with the UI refactoring? I could capture the following:

• remove 1.3 altogether (see #249)
• move the assemblies from the dedicated Dynamo folder to BHoM/Assemblies and access them by setting the paths in DynamoSettings.xml

[adecler]

@pawelbaran , I am afraid not. https://github.com/BHoM/Dynamo_Toolkit/pull/255 is changing pretty much every single file. What can be done though is making the change directly on that PR itself. Happy for you to have a go if you want.

[pawelbaran]

Oke, in such case I will prototype locally and try to coordinate with you once I make it work. Thanks!

[pawelbaran]

@adecler I just gave it a shot and copied the assemblies related to Dynamo UI to BHoM folder:

Then I added the following line in %appdata\Dynamo\Dynamo Revit\2.X\DynamoSettings.xml, same for both 2.0 and 2.3:

And BHoM got loaded to Dynamo, but without anything happening on BHoM button click. I guess that is because only _DynamoEngine.dll and _DynamoUI.dll get loaded atm resulting in empty buttons.

To sum up: it seems that it should be possible to centralise Dynamo UI in the BHoM\Assemblies folder, but we would need to make sure the assemblies from the central folder get loaded correctly on the UI startup. Not sure what would be the best approach here:

• maybe the Dynamo assemblies could be stored directly in BHoM\Assemblies?
• maybe we could refine the pkg.json file so that it makes sure all necessary assemblies get loaded from different locations?

It needs to be further investigated - I did not go deeper bearing in mind that you are planning to refactor the Dynamo UI - I hope the above will help with that.

[adecler]

Now superseded by #267