Cache

The cache is used to avoid unnecessary downloads of things like server binaries, compilers and plugins. It is located at ~/.samp where ~ is your personal home directory - on Windows this is C:\Users\name, on Mac this is /Users/name and on Debian/Ubuntu or other Linux platforms this is /home/name.

Note: It is safe to delete the entire cache folder at any time for any reason, sampctl will just re-download what it needs. In future, there may be built in cache management commands.

This directory will typically contain three directories as well as various archives from any previous downloads of server binaries, compilers and plugins.

At the time of writing, my cache looks something like this, with some files omitted for clarity:

├── pawn
│   └── 3.10.4
│       ├── libpawnc.dylib
│       ├── pawnc-3.10.4-darwin
│       └── pawncc
├── pawnc-3.10.4-darwin.zip
├── plugins
│   ├── samp-plugin-crashdetect
│   │   └── latest
│   └── samp-streamer-plugin
│       └── latest
├── runtime
│   └── 0.3.7
└── samp037svr_R2-2-1.tar.gz

The pawn Directory

This contains compilers in subdirectories named after their versions. Inside will be the original archive, the executable and a dynamic library. This is the compiler that package builds use to compile the code. If for any reason you need to swap out the compiler binaries manually, this is where you would do that.

The runtime Directory

This is where runtimes are held. A runtime is a minimal SA:MP server in a folder named after the version. This is what is used when you run a package, the .amx file is copied here and executed as a gamemode.

You cannot modify any of the configuration files such as server.cfg as these are generated whenever a package is run. You can modify the runtime configuration on a per-package level via the runtime field in the Package Definition File.

The plugins Directory

This is where plugins, (technically: "package resources") are downloaded to. These are either plugin release archives or plain .so/.dll files, depending on how the plugin author releases them.

These subdirectories are named by the plugin version, or if none was specified when the download was initiated, the term latest is used.