Save storage space on your shared UiPath development VM

Many a times, the developers may shared the development VM as it may be within the client firewall. The IT admin will always be on a lookout for maintaining sufficient disk space as you do not want the disk space to run out on any of the VM’s be it development or production, right!

But do you know that every time a developer uses the UiPath Studio, by default, activities packages are downloaded and installed in the %userprofile%\.nuget\packages folder ? If you have 5 developers logged in any time and then there will always be 5 folders for each userprofile with the .nuget packages folder created for each of them and this remains even if the developer no longer uses the same VM. This is redundant space being utilized by the .nuget packages for each of the user profile.

So, how do we avoid it ? The best way to do this is to change the Download folder path and have it common for the VM. Let us see how to do this by following the simple steps below:

1. Open the uipath.config file ( usually located under C:\Program Files\UiPath\Studio\uipath.config). You will need to open it in Admin mode of the editor ( e.g. open Notepad++ in admin mode to edit this file)
2. Look for the <packageSettings> entry within this file.
3. Create a new folder in C: drive that you need to be used for all the default downloads.
4. Add the following additional line , please ensure to give the appropriate value for the “your default installation path” e.g.”C:\UiPath_nuget_Common”

<packageSettings>
    <add key="disableSecureXaml" value="False" />
 <add key="packagesInstallationFolder" value="<your default installation path>" />
  </packageSettings>

5. Save the changes and, if the Robot is installed as a service, restart the service. (Note: This will be required to be done on the production VM’s as the production VM will ideally be installed in the service mode. Open Start->Run->Services and look for UiPath Robot service to restart it)

6. That is it, now when you test with multiple developers the packages will be downloaded to your packagesInstallationFolder.

Note: If there are multiple version of the package, then it will download and keep multiple version of the packages, so the developers can work parallelly on multiple version of the same package as well!

Multiple version of the same package

7. Feel free to remove the user downloaded .nuget packges to free up the space!

Thus, we can see how easy it is to change the download path folder and avoid the redundant .nuget packages being downloaded for multiple users.

Happy automation!