DCAF Tip: Exclude Folders From Plugin Search

[Jacobson-ni]

There have been several occasions during development or testing where I have wanted to load all modules from a particular location except for one in particular. For me, this is especially helpful when I would like to test a branch of a module which I already have installed. While looking into how difficult it would be to add this behavior I found out that this feature existed already but is essentially hidden.

In the directory <vi.lib>\NI\DCAF\Tag Editor Core\ (or next to the built editor executable) you should find a file named cache.cdat. This file is just a flattened cluster which contains information about the module search paths, location to previously loaded classes (to improve performance), and the following (line 16 for me):

<Array>
     <Name>Folders to Exclude</Name>
     <Dimsize>0</Dimsize>
     <String>
          <Name>String</Name>
          <Val></Val>
     </String>
</Arr

By editing the Dimsize and Val properties you add folders to exclude which will, under the hood, be used as the "Folders to Exclude" input to LabVIEW's "Recursive File List.vi". As an example, if your search path includes <vi.lib>\NI\DCAF, you can stop the TDMS module from loading by editing cache.dat as shown below.

<Array>
     <Name>Folders to Exclude</Name>
     <Dimsize>1</Dimsize>
     <String>
          <Name>String</Name>
          <Val>TDMS Datalogger</Val>
     </String>
</Arr