Saving character portfolio breaks hard links

[Weissrolf]

Hello,

it seems that Hero Lab's save command does not properly write to the original file, but creates a new one?!

I was trying to use NTFS hard links to keep all portfolio files in my Dropbox apps folder while having 1:1 copies in a OneDrive folder for my players to have access to.

Unfortunately as soon as you hit save in Hero Lab the NTFS hard link is deleted, as if a completely new file was created.

 

[Colen]

That's correct - to minimize the chance of a save file being corrupted, HL does the following:

1) Save the new file to a temporary file in the same directory
2) Delete the original file
3) Rename the temporary file from (1) with the original file's name

That way if Hero Lab or the computer crashes during step 1, you don't end up with a half-written save file. I'm afraid I'm not aware of a way of doing this that would maintain the presence of the original file.

 

[Weissrolf]

Thanks for the reply! Maybe Hero Lab's iPad app could learn to use sub-folders? That would make organizing things easier and also tidy up the character list in the app.

 

[Colen]

Thanks for the reply! Maybe Hero Lab's iPad app could learn to use sub-folders? That would make organizing things easier and also tidy up the character list in the app.

Thanks for the suggestion - this is something on our to-do list.