Version 0.1.0 release announcement
Version 0.2.0 release announcement

I love khajiits. I've already presented Jobasha, that will perfectly organize all your lists in his library(Leveled List Tool). Now it's time for Habasi to step in.

Goals:

• Overcome plugin quantity limit
• Bring more order into mod lists
  

This program was created primarily to fight game limit of used plugins. "Morrowind.exe"(256), MWSE(1024), OpenMW(no limit from engine, though most operating systems have some kind of limit for simultaneously opened files per process). I use a lot of mods and hit the limit on MacOS(256), Linux(varies, 1024 default in case of Arch) and Android(1024). OpenMW opens lots of files besides plugins, so 1024 opened files limit was hit at around 600 plugins simultaneously on Linux and Android. It's easy to overcome the limit on MacOS and Linux, but it's somewhat hard on Android. It's easier to merge plugins.

I've used self-made tes3cmd scripts to merge half of my plugins for a year. It's faster and easier to merge plugins after updating them with scripts, than trying to do that in very slow construction set. Scripts were primitive though, so everything with external references, same cell references or many dialogues was off-limit. The program deals with all those things correctly and much faster. You just install, keep and update all your plugins in their own folders, run program and use merged plugins afterwards.

The only problem with merging is cell reference renumbering. You can not merge several references with the same id while keeping their ids intact. That means that you should not merge/remerge plugins that contain non-external references(most of the plugins) during the playthrough. I'd also generally not recommend merging 4 base ESMs(Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon, TR_Mainland) to allow leveled lists merging tools work correctly with deleted subrecords(only few tools are able to do it though, that's the main reason I've made Jobasha).

There are also record mergers: TES3Merge, Merged Lands, all the leveled lists mergers etc. I only use leveled lists merging, though I've made sure that most of those(tested with tes3cmd, TES3Merge, Jobasha) would continue working with merged plugins the same way as with unmerged. It's done by keeping different variants of mergeable records in a merged plugin by default.

Secondary reason to create the program was the desire to bring more order into mod lists of the users of my patches. Some of the files I've uploaded contain dozens of individual patches: "BTBGIsation" ~115, "BTBGI - Modular Patch" ~80, "Miscellaneous Patches" ~65, "Wares-base Expansion" ~38 etc. I offer merged versions, but in some cases only OpenMW users may use those versions due to "Morrowind.exe" limitations. It looks tidier to have needed patches merged into single files. Some mods may also benefit from merging IMO. Few come to mind: "Balmora Waterworks", "Repopulated Morrowind", "Mage Robes", "Wares", probably mighty "BCOM".

Usage:

Basic usage is simple. List plugins and run the tool. Merging process looks like this internally:

• Record will be discarded if it's exactly the same as previously encountered record with the same type and id
• (Default mode) Everything mergeable is stacked before the final version of the record to allow record mergers to work
• (Replace mode) Newer record replace older records, e.g. default behaviour for both engines
• Records types that are "really" merged are: CELL(references), LTEX + LAND(VTEX), master subrecords from the header
  

More uses of plugin merging appeared after the prototype was made:

• Find outdated plugins(broken external references) when merging the whole load order.
  Version 0.2.0 update I've made this task easier, just run habasi -C
• Create isolated single merged plugins for each playthrough. It should be easier to return back to that character paired with it's only plugin years later. Ideally there should be another mode or tool to scan your files and create accompanying single BSA archive with assets, but I don't have time to make it yet.
• Improve plugins loading time(the least important, interesting though):
  My measurements of plugins loading time. Keep in mind, that it's only a part of the whole loading process. My grass takes around 5(4-6) seconds to load, so I've skipped it's measurements. I have around 650 plugins, 250 were already merged though. Two values listed: lin - 5 years old laptop with mobile Core-i5, and - 2 years old android smartphone:
  
  • and 9.0s, lin 9.9s: 398 plugins;
  • and 8.0s, lin 8.5s: 349 plugins;
  • and 8.0s, lin 8.5s: 349 plugins;
  • and 5.6s, lin 6.3s: 99 plugins;
  • and 4.2s, lin 5.1s: 49 plugins;
  • and 3.7s, lin 4.2s: 22 plugins;
  • and 1.5s, lin 3.3s: 1 plugin(including Morrowind.esm etc).
    

The last extreme example of the complete merge is interesting. OpenMW plays it correctly. I haven't tested with "Morrowind.exe" though. In my case the result looks like this(merged plugins and merged grass):

• 464M[egabytes] United-ALL.esp
• 238M[egabytes] United-GRS-ALL.esp
  

There are few points to remember if you decide to go this route:
Version 0.2.0 update I've made this task easier, just run habasi -O

• Current release of Tamriel Rebuilt(23.02.03) requires to remove 1 record from the merged plugin. That happens because TR_Mainland adds "tr_m3_oe_esoldereward" GLOB, then TR_Hotfix marks it as deleted. As a result OpenMW doesn't know what to do with the lonely "deleted" record. Command should look like this(or similar action in any other tool, e.g. Enchanted Editor):
  tes3cmd delete --type glob --exact-id "tr_m3_oe_esoldereward" United-ALL.esp
• Merged leveled lists would better be made in advance, then merged into with "strip_masters"(check example configuration).
• Grass would also require stripping masters(check example configuration).
  

Version 0.2.0 update:
Initially I was not going to add load order scanning due to the nature of the program. It turned out to be a valuable addition for some tasks though. That's why I've implemented load order scanning and then built presets on top of it. Check Features further.