How to reduce disc-space or change storage location of IDEasy?

[hohwille]

The C:/ drive on my Windows computer is full. How can I make IDEasy use D:/ drive instead where I have plenty of space left?

[hohwille]

There are different aspects to consider:

• ${IDE_ROOT} where IDEasy gets installed (e.g. C:\projects or D:\projects or ~/projects). This location is chosen during the initial installation. It can be changed afterwards. Easiest way is the simply move your ${IDE_ROOT} folder (projects) from the current to the desired location. After that you also need to change the global environment variable IDE_ROOT on your system. See FAQ about "How to set a variable?" on details. As alternative you can uninstall IDEasy and reinstall it and then move your existing projects to the new location. In both ways, you will also have configurations for your tools like Eclipse, IntelliJ, VSCode, etc. that also contain absolute paths pointing to the old location that need to be fixed. Most of them will be auto-repaired when you launch the IDE with IDEasy for the next time. However all configurations not managed by IDEasy will not be auto-repared. You can use a tool like notepad++ or something similar to do a recursive search & replace on your new ${IDE_ROOT}.
• IDEasy maintains a "download-cache" in your home directory (~/Downloads/ide), where it puts all the software it downloads from the internet. Those files are not needed anymore if the tools are installed. However, if you need to download the same tool with the same edition and the same version again, then IDEasy does not need to download it again from the Internet but will take it from the cache. If you want to free disc-space you can simply delete the content of this folder. If you want to make IDEasy store the download cache on a different disc or partition, you need to relocate your home directory or you can use a symbolic link in ~/Downloads/ide pointing to a different location.
• The tools maven or gradle maintain a "local repository" where it keeps downloaded artifacts. The default location of this repository is in ~/.m2/repository. However, with the default settings IDEasy reconfigures this to ${IDE_HOME}/conf/.m2/repository. To tweak this configuration look for the variable M2_REPO in e.g. ${IDE_HOME}/conf/ide.properties (or devon.properties). By writing all your artifacts in a central shared repository like ~/.m2/repository you can save disc-space if you have multiple IDEasy projects using maven. However, the projects are then not fully isolated. If you have high security demands for such a project, you should keep the repository isolated what is the reason why this is the default of IDEasy.
• Similar tools like npm or yarn create such repository of downloaded artifacts in node_modules folders. Those are not organized in a central repository location but are directly created inside your project (typically inside the workspace). If you need to free disc-space you could consider cleaning up some node_modules folders.
• IDEasy does not physically delete folders from your disc to avoid being responsible of data-loss. If it wants to "delete" something, it actually moves it to backup folders inside ${IDE_ROOT}/_ide/tmp. You can save disc-space by deleting this backup folder or even the entire ${IDE_ROOT}/_ide/tmp folder.
• In general if you are low on disc-space and you are looking for the "big stuff", you can use according tools that scan your entire disc and show tree- and heat-maps that guide you to the right spots. For Windows we recommend the tool windirstat. However, do not delete large files unless you know that they are not needed. The first thing Windows users will discover this way are files like pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, etc. that take a lot of disc-space but should not be deleted as they are there for good reasons.