Disable/Remove GAP or other plugins.

[michele_bs]

Dear Gimp users,

I've installed the Gimp Animation Package on Windows 7 some time ago, and I notice a slowing down for Gimp to initialize and open, due to the need to load GAP (most of all) and the other plugins. Well, I don't use GAP often, so I was wondering if there is the possibility to temporarily disable a plugin without uninstalling it. In fact, I neither know how to definitively remove a plugin; for comlex packages like GAP, deleting only the related files in the GIMP plugin directory would'nt be enough, I suppose.

Any help?

With many thanks,

Michele

[ofnuts]

Not too expert with GAP, nevertheless:

• Gimp startup delays come from plugins (each plugin found in the plugins directory is called in turn, some maybe be slow to start), and the size of the collections of brushes, fonts, gradients, and the like.
• Edit/preference/folders lets you organize where these Gimp extensions are kept
• So you can put the files coming with GAP (especially the plugins) in their own folder and enable/disable GAP by adding/removing the folder using the preferences. I can't tell if there are enough files other than plugins/modules coming with GAP (fonts and suchlike) to slow down the startup, but you can also move them in their own folder. And even smarter/quicker way to do this is to:
  • prepare two directory trees:
    • One with the GAP files spread over the necessary directories (let's say GAP, with subdirectories GAP/plugins, GAP/scripts...)
    • One with identically-named, empty directories (GAP.empty, with GAP.empty/plugins, GAP.empty/scripts...)
      
  • Gimp folders preferences are made to point to the necessary directories in GAP
  • To disable GAP, rename the directory GAP to GAP.disabled and GAP.empty to GAP
  • To enable GAP, rename the directory GAP to GAP.empty and GAP.disabled back to GAP
    

To locate which files that came with GAP, use your file explorer in "Details" mode, and add the column "creation date". Those that came with GAP will normally have a creation time set to when you installed GAP, so if you didn't install anything else at the sale time they are easy to distinguish from the rest.

[michele_bs]

Dear ofnuts,

thank you for the support. I'll check your tips.

[michele_bs]

Dear ofnuts,

only now I have been able to try your suggestions; I hope this delay won't bother you.

So just a few lines to tell you that this method you explained to disable the unuseful GIMP plugin is excellent. I created GAP and GAP.disabled directories, switching their names depending on my purposes. In fact, such "backup directories" (with different names) can be used also to exclude other unuseful plugins that don't belong to GAP.

This method is also effective to disable/enable scripts, with the advantage that there's no need here to restard GIMP to apply changes, because the function "Refresh the scripts" on Filters -> Script-fu can be used.

It's only necessary to understand which particular plugin or script corresponds to a certain file (sometimes the file names are obscure, and can't help in this...).

This slowing down on startup is particularly annoying in Windows, where every plugin is an .exe file which requires time to be opened. In Linux all is faster.

Finally, I am particularly happy to have known something more about this matter, because it seems there are no other informations on the internet about it. When I type something like "Gimp plugin disable" on Google, this page is among the first four or five listed, with the other one on registry.gimp.org which contains a similar question, still mine and published before this one, which however didn't receive any replies.

[ofnuts]

Glad to help...