Add ability to reclaim space taken by cached packages

[JKSH]

C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI Package Manager\packages is a black hole. Files enter but never leave -- my PC has collected so many old (and now-useless) packages over the years, e.g.

• ni-package-manager_17.5.0.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
• ni-package-manager_18.0.1.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
• ni-package-manager_18.0.2.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
• ni-package-manager_18.5.1.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
• ni-package-manager_19.0.0.49152-0+f0_windows_all.nipkg
• ni-package-manager_19.6.0.49152-0+f0_windows_all.nipkg

It is safe to delete these. If NIPM needs to re-install the package, it simply re-downloads them.

Please add a way on the NIPM GUI for users to easily clear the package cache. Bonus points if there's an option to retain the versions that are currently installed (I believe NI Package Builder grabs the packages from this folder?)

[JKSH]

My apologies, I re-read the original post and realized that it sounds quite snarky. I should've chosen better words.

I do like the features that NIPM has provided to date, and I look forward to even greater things from it. Please keep up the good work, NI!

[ErikL68]

Wow - my work PC's SSD has over 21 GB of these installers on it, and I'm down to < 60 GB free on the drive. Yikes!

Another thought: Let users in a company select a shared location on the company network for these files vs. their local drive. This setting should be exposed in NIPM or even pulled from the License Server or similar.

[altenbach]

>> Files enter but never leave ...

Wasn't that the tagline of the original Roach Motel? 😄

[JKSH]

>>> Files enter but never leave ...

>

> Wasn't that the tagline of the original Roach Motel? 😄

That would be "Flies enter but never leave" 😉

[Scott_Richardson]

Package Manager 2022 Q4 released, which now removes uninstalled packages from the its "cache" directory (C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI Package Manager\Packages). Before this change, NIPM never removed uninstalled and upgraded packages from the cache, which might consist of an increasing amount of hard drive space.

[Trebilic]

@Scott_Richardson, Does this mean that old packages will be uninstalled when the new NIPM is installed automatically? Or are you saying that only packages that the new 22Q4 version was used to obtain will be managed moving forward. Or in other words, will there still need to be a manual cleanup effort? 

[Scott_Richardson]

Trebilic, in addition to removing packages from the cache when they are uninstalled, when a new version of NIPM is installed NIPM compares what is already installed to what is in the cache and removes any packages from the cache that are not installed, so this applies to packages previously uninstalled before that new version of NIPM was installed. There are scenarios where installations copy a package to the cache and might not remove them when an installation is interrupted and does not finish, so installation of the new NIPM will eventually find those and remove them.