Custom instance locations and launcher wrapper

[wohaopa]

Role

I hope to be able to store different versions of Minecraft in various locations and have them managed by a single Prism instance.

Suggestion

I think it's possible to create a small wrapper to point to a global Prism instance. And include the search path for Prism instances.

Benefit

I believe this would be convenient for installing Minecraft instances shared among friends because sometimes I prefer not to have them placed together.

This suggestion is unique

• I have searched the issue tracker and did not find an issue describing my suggestion, especially not one that has been rejected.

You may use the editor below to elaborate further.

I think Prism could have a small wrapper that points to the main Prism binary. When users run this wrapper from any directory, it should launch Prism itself and add the directory where the wrapper is located as the instance directory. I believe many Minecraft players prefer this approach (at least my friends and I do): placing the game's executable files in different locations on the disk and managing them all through a single launcher.

I think for such a large launcher like Prism, users probably don't want to install multiple instances on their hard drive. I believe the wrapper can do more, such as asking the user for the launcher's installation location if not found, or even downloading and installing a launcher.

I think that's possible; the wrapper's configuration file could be stored in the same directory or in the user's directory.

[Trial97]

How is this different from: #1642 or #901?

[wohaopa]

The difference between me and them is that I prefer having a wrapper. When obtaining and playing a new Minecraft instance, I lean towards using an ultra-small launcher (like HMCL) to manage that instance or a few instances. Sometimes the purpose is to avoid having them appear in my Prism instances. When playing these Minecraft instances, I prefer opening the folder, finding the launcher in the directory, and then launching the Minecraft instance. At that moment, I don't want to see instances from other Prism directories, nor do I want to start the Minecraft instance in that directory through a Prism shortcut.

[wohaopa]

Because Prism's group management is only single-level, while folders can have multiple levels of separation. Alternatively, transforming Prism's groups into tag-based management, similar to virtual tags in object storage, could be a solution.

[wohaopa]

There is another suggestion; I hope the global data directory of PrismLauncher can also be customized. For example, through a global variable or a file in the default data directory, similar to customizing cache locations in Gradle.

[Trial97]

So you just want a command line argument to specify the instance location?
Then using that you can create your wrappers yourself.

For now here are a few suggestions:

• do a script that changes the instance folder path inside the prism config right before starting it
• there is already a command line argument named dir that let's you specify the data directory path

[wohaopa]

Thank you for your suggestion! However, I found that the dir parameter redirects along with resource files like libraries, and I only want to redirect instances. Moreover, modifying the configuration file every time is not a wise choice. I will initiate a PR to implement the option for users to choose multiple instances directories.