This is a well-known problem - see for example Vassal Library does not show up.
Vassal keeps a registry of all known modules, etc., as well as settings for individual modules in a user-specific directory
| OS | Directory |
|---|---|
 |
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\ |
 |
~/Library/Application Support/VASSAL/ |
 |
~/.VASSAL/ |
Specifically, the file
| OS | Directory |
|---|---|
|
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\prefs\V_Global |
|
~/Library/Application Support/VASSAL/prefs/V_Global |
|
~/.VASSAL/prefs/V_Global |
contains a list of the known modules as well as the most recently opened modules.
Thus, if you back-up that file from time to time,
| OS | Back-up command |
|---|---|
|
copy C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\prefs\V_Global C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\prefs\V_Global.backup |
|
cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/VASSAL/prefs/V_Global{,.backup} |
|
cp ~/.VASSAL/prefs/V_Global{,.backup} |
and restore it from that back-up
| OS | Restore command |
|---|---|
|
copy C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\prefs\V_Global.backup C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\VASSAL\prefs\V_Global |
|
cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/VASSAL/prefs/V_Global{.backup,} |
|
cp ~/.VASSAL/prefs/V_Global{.backup,} |
you will not need to re-import the modules into the manager.
Of course, that requires a bit of discipline on your behalf.
On Linux, you can open a module at a specific location by passing the --load option. Suppose you have your Google Drive Vassal directory mounted as /mnt/googledrive/vmods, and you want to play Foo.vmod from there, then you can do
$ vassal --load /mnt/googledrive/vmods/Foo.vmod
which you won’t be able to do until the directory is actually mounted. lll
That’s a looong method. Perhaps there should be a command line option that will disable the clean-up of the known modules - say --keep-modules or perhaps an explicit --clean-modules, or both defaulting to --clean-modules.
Yours,
Christian