Hey,
Maybe this is with all externals, but I have been looking into transferring patches to other computers. I do not understand why, and I assume there is a reasonable explanation.

The patches I have made, I merely just transfer to the new computer. Easy. The patches that are externals, at least in deken, but maybe others as well have to be downloaded again. I tried just moving all of the files to the new computer (I am using macs). I put the files in the location where all the files were documents/Pd/externals.

As I write this, I realize the name of the account might be different which might be the reason Pd cannot find the files. Or is it that the files have to be recompiled.

I am not sure if I had to recompile the files the last time I changed computers which was in 2018 or 2019. I transferred my entire account from one computer to another computer.

Is it common to have to recompile? I assume so. Is there a way around this? At the same time, it might be good to recompile so that I can get any updates from the last time I got the externals.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated so that I can understand better.

What do you mean by "recompile"? When you install an external object through deken, there's no compilation going on, you're just downloading a pre-compiled binary file (the external object, not its source code) for your architecture (that would be macOS in your case). Are you sure the computer where you transfer your patches and externals has the same architecture as yours? What are the error messages you get?
I don't have a mac and it might be some issue with apple doing all this quarantine stuff, but I could be wrong in this.
Can you post the error messages you get?

Maybe it is quarantining then. I changed the pathway to where the file is but the folder was not recognized by Pd. Perhaps, and very likely, Mac is doing things to make the folder not findable.

Did you try installing the externals on the second machine through deken, instead of transferring them?

External loading is one of those things where there are a hundred ways to mess it up.

After struggling with it for a while myself, I came up with a few practices that remove some variables, thus remove some risk.

1. Only install externals in the "pd externals install directory" (found in the preferences panel). Do not ever install externals in any other location. Deken (IIRC) download externals here, so that's fine.
   • Actually, on my system, Gem is an exception since I'm using the Ubuntu package instead of installing from deken. But to avoid the types of complications that I ran into before, I symlinked the Gem into my pd externals install location: under Documents/Pd/externals/, there is a Gem directory, but it's a link pointing to /usr/local/lib/pd/extra/Gem. So I access it through the externals install directory.
2. Pd "path" should list only the externals install directory -- my path list is "/home/xxx/Documents/Pd/externals" and nothing else. So I always know where to start looking.
3. Use [declare -path xxx] to add library paths, and "-lib yyy" to init libraries like Gem.
   • Isn't that a pain to have to do that in every patch? Well, not really... and the benefit is that you can search the patch for any declare objects used in the main patch file or abstractions to quickly get an inventory of which externals need to be transferred.

If you follow some streamlined practices for external management, then it removes a lot of speculation and worry. Recompiling? No... Or, "Mac is doing things to make the folder not findable" -- it's a user folder under Documents; if Mac is hiding folders under Documents without the user's permission, that would be pretty bad -- so that's a concrete example showing how you benefit from putting externals in a consistent location that is expected to be under your control, not the system's control.

My "rules" might seem too strict but I arrived at this because being haphazard about external installation caused a ton of headaches for me early on. Those problems don't exist for me anymore.

hjh

Thank you so much for the feedback. I understand most of what you have indicated here.