Organizing indicators / scripts / EAs / etc

[garyfritz]

A suggestion, and some questions:

We all know you have to have multiple Empty4 installations to connect to multiple accounts (e.g. a live account and a demo account at the same time) or multiple brokers.

I thought it was insane to try to keep sets of indicators &etc current in N different Empty4 installs, so I consolidated. I have one CommonExperts directory that contains the normal contents of the "experts" directory in a normal Empty4 install. Then in each of my N Empty4 installs, I delete the "experts" directory and replace it with a link (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link) called "experts" which points to CommonExperts. Bob's your uncle, and all the MT4s share the common set of indys/etc. You need only maintain one copy of everything. Seems to work a treat. I think.

Next step: trying to add some degree of organization to all the indys / etc in there. Empty4 wants to dump all the indicators into the indicators folder, all the EAs in the experts folder, etc. That gets completely unmanageable when you're experimenting with dozens of different indicators, systems, EAs, etc. All the indicators are piled into one directory and you have no idea what goes with what, what system/EA/approach those indicators belong to, and so on.

No problem, I thought -- I'll just organize them into sub-directories. So I can create indicators\Stuff, indicators\MoreStuff, indicators\StillMoreStuff, etc. That keeps those separate groups of indicators separate so I can remember what goes with what. I even created an indicators\MT4stuff for all the standard Empty4 indicators that I never use, so they don't clutter up the custom indicator list.

Except Empty4 doesn't seem to have any way to USE things in sub-directories. Insert -> Indicators -> Custom shows the indys in the "indicators" folder, but it does NOT let you browse into sub-directories. Same with the "Custom Indicators" section of the Navigator.

Is there any way to insert indicators/etc from sub-directories?

I had partial success with a template file from a friend. I edited the "name=IndicatorName" lines in the *.tpl file to say "name=JOESTHINGIE\IndicatorName", and Empty4 happily loaded the indicators from the indicators\JOESTHINGIE directory. Or at least some of them -- only the ones that were pre-compiled to ex4 worked. I had to hand-compile the mq4 files in the editor for the template to load the indicators.

And in fact only ex4 files work in the "indicators" folder too. Usually Empty4 automatically compiles mq4 files to ex4, so you see them in the indicator list -- but that doesn't seem to be working now. I wonder if my CommonExperts trick has thrown that off somehow?? Help?

Thanks for any insights!
Gary

[cuzgeorge]

Thanks GaryFritz, i did'nt know you can do this. i'm running 4 different crims' meta on one pc and this really helps.

[NeoTrader]

Hi Gary,

thanks for the Tip with the symbolic Links. I knew about them...but never thought to use them with Empty4... thanks again...

[jjasper7]

gary, i tried to make a 'common' directory, and enter a 'shortcut' in my Cowboy IBFX indicator directory. it did not show up in the 'navigator' directory, so i take it Empty4 does not honor shortcuts, or i have made some other mistake. have you found a better solution since your post? where have you found best to place the new experts folder?

[garyfritz]

How did you create the shortcut? Did you use an NTFS symbolic link like I mentioned?

I forget the exact command I used, but I think it was something like:

cd <<wherever>>\Cowboy IBFX
ren experts experts-original
mklink /d experts <<wherever>>\Common-experts

I think /j works as well as /d -- honestly I'm not sure how they're different. They do very similar things.

[NeoTrader]

hi gary, jjasper

I think /j works as well as /d -- honestly I'm not sure how they're different. They do very similar things.

/j creates a junction point
/d creates a symbolic link

They are both very similar except that junction points can only point to absolute paths on local drives (that would be enough if all Empty4 related directories are local) and symbolic links allow linking using relative paths and are capable to use remote SMB network paths (this would be needed if you want to have your source Empty4 directory on a NAS or a server).

I would also advise that you use a directory in the root of your local drive and not in "program Files (x86).

happy trading,

NeoTrader

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[jjasper7]

hi gary, neo,
ok, i am going beyond what i know and am guessing. i had tried to rt click and create a shortcut, which did not work, so i am going to try again. i have created a folder at c:\experts to get out of win7's protected domain so i can use the one folder and subfolders for all the different Empty4 platforms as one source for the eas and indis, plus a simple way to make backups. then am assuming that i need to 'cmd' to get into dos, and type:
cd c:\interbankfx_1-click // to get into the Empty4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old Cowboy IBFX platform dir and get it out of the usage path
mklink /d c:\interbankfx_1-click\experts C:\experts //to redirect Cowboy IBFX Empty4
//and
cd c:\program files\fxcm\experts // to get into the Empty4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old Cowboy IBFX platform dir and get it out of the usage path
mklink /d c:\iprogram files\fxcm\experts C:\experts //to redirect #2
//and
exit //to get back to windows

does that look ok?

[jjasper7]

hi gary, neo,
oops, re-comment...

ok, i am going beyond what i know and am guessing. i had tried to rt click and create a shortcut, which did not work, so i am going to try again. i have created a folder at c:\experts to get out of win7's protected domain so i can use the one folder and subfolders for all the different Empty4 platforms as one source for the eas and indis, plus a simple way to make backups. then am assuming that i need to 'cmd' to get into dos, and type:
cd c:\interbankfx_1-click // to get into the Cowboy IBFX Empty4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old Cowboy IBFX platform dir and get it out of the usage path
mklink /d c:\interbankfx_1-click\experts C:\experts //to redirect Cowboy IBFX Empty4 to the common files
//and
cd c:\program files\fxcm\experts // to get into the fxcmmt4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old fxcm platform dir and get it out of the usage path
mklink /d c:\iprogram files\fxcm\experts C:\experts //to redirect fxcm
//and
exit //to get back to windows

does that look ok?

[jjasper7]

how do i prepare the files so that the message 'you do not have sufficient privelege to perform this operation' does not appear when i type the mklink command?

[garyfritz]

Click the Windows Orb (round thingie in lower-left). Type "command". "Command Prompt" appears in the search list above. If you click on it, it runs normally. Right-click on it and choose "Run as Administrator," and then you won't get that message.

Shortcuts created in Explorer won't work. You have to open a command prompt and run the commands I posted.

cd c:\interbankfx_1-click // to get into the Cowboy IBFX Empty4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old Cowboy IBFX platform dir and get it out of the usage path
mklink /d c:\interbankfx_1-click\experts C:\experts //to redirect Cowboy IBFX Empty4 to the common files

Yes, IF you've already copied everything to C:\experts.

cd c:\program files\fxcm\experts // to get into the fxcmmt4 platform's directory
ren experts experts-original // to rename the old fxcm platform dir and get it out of the usage

No, you're already IN experts. The CD above should just be "cd c:\program files\fxcm".