Have you done any tests of Instance creator?

[ttodua]

I am just curious, if any of you (from NT team) has used the separate-instance-creator ? that facilitates the process for created isolated instances for NT to test .dlls. Till date, people are used to manually copy & paste "Documents/Ninjatrader 8" folder to create different instances for testing different scripts.
just wanted if that utility has had any usage from NT community. Or if you can even adopt it.

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello TazoTodua,

I don't believe anyone on the support team has tested this in any capacity, if any users have I am certain they will comment here.

I took a look at the link and it seems that the author linked to their bitbucket for the download, the source is there so you can take a look to see what it specifically does if you wanted. It appears to just move around files and gives a interface to do that. This looks to be just a simple C# application so the code is pretty straightforward. While I can't comment if it works or not, because the source is here you could run the application yourself to step through any problems it encounters to make it work as you needed it to.

I will additionally put in a feature request for a included way to manage user data which goes beyond the simple backup/restore. A feature for developers similar to this would be helpful if there was some means to create empty installs like that for testing.

I look forward to being of further assistance.

[ttodua]

Thanks for answer. Personally you, in NT (as you test many new scripts in separate instance) methods do you use to facilicate the process? as i have different bundle of dll's and script separated per different client, I use multiple instances (in the past, I used to manually copy -paste the folder and rename it by hand everytime, making the process annoying). I wanted to know if any simpler method existed. and now that utility helps).

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello TazoTodua,

In support this would not necessarily work better than just manually moving around the files. The reason is that we don't have the need to keep old data for specific clients to where that would be beneficial.

For tests or just writing sample code for clients that does not necessarily have to be in a clean user folder. Most source code tests won't require changing folders so it is really infrequent we would need to do this for support type concerns. In some cases we do need to text exported .dll's so in that case a quick rename manually is the most efficient.

I agree that this would be a good feature for end users because manually moving files is not often comfortable for a lot of users. It sounds like for your use case this would likely be beneficial because you have to keep some data between tests. You could also use the following steps as another way to accomplish that:

Create your standard folder
Create your testing folder
Create any other user folders you needed

Do the following for each user folder you want to quickly open:

1. Open the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\NinjaTrader 8\bin64 then right click NinjaTrader8.exe and send to -> Desktop
2. Rename the icon to something specific for this user folder
3. Right click icon -> Properties
4. Modify the target to point to your user data folder:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\NinjaTrader 8\bin64\NinjaTrader.exe" /d "C:\Users\MyUsername\Documents\NinjaTrader 8.dev"

I look forward to being of further assistance.

[ttodua]

i didnt know the last one - its the good thing, i regret i didnt know that before ....I've lost so many hours because i didnt know that..

Can you please create a doc page, with the title "multiple separate instances for ninjatrader" so people like me could find that simple thing.