I do quite a bit of coding of KnowBrainer commands.  Mostly adding and editing new commands of my own.

As is standard software engineering practice, I keep track of changes to my KnowBrainer commands using a version control system.  In this case, I copy MyKBCommands.xml from where KnowBrainer keeps it , and then check it in using git.

This has worked fine for more than a year.  Changes I make to KnowBrainer commands using KBCE (the KnowBrainer Command Editor) can be seen in MyKBCommands.xml, git diffed, etc.

However, once in a while, and recently the last 3 or 4 times in a row, my changes have NOT been reflected in MyKBCommands.xml.  

Instead, I find my changes in MyKBCommands_withAmendedCommands.xml

I often can recover any such changes from the AmendedCommands file, recreate the missing KnowBrainer commands, and then take care to find MyKBCommands.xml.  (often by doing a complertely fresh PC restart.)

But... this wastes time. It's better than starting from scratch, but I would still prefer not to have to do it.

---+ So, my questions are:

Q: what is happening that changes are reflected in MyKBCommands_withAmendedCommands.xml but not MyKBCommands.xml?

Q: am I doing something, like "Close Dragon and KnowBrainer" via SpeechStart+, that is causing this problem?

Q: when is it safe for me to copy MyKBCommands.xml?   I.e. when is it consistent on diskI  always try to wait until I can run KniowBrainer commands again, and I often do "SpeechStart+ Close Dragon and KnowBrainer" -- or, when SpeechStart+ has failed, I kill Dragon and KnowBrainer, and/or restarty my PC.

Q: is KnowBrainer saving to MyKBCommands.xml whenever a command is changing? Or is there some buffering/delay? Over and above the usual windows buffering.

Q: when I restore MyKBCommands.xml from git/backup, is it sufficient to overwrite just MyKNCommands.xml, or both that and MyKBCommands_withAmendedCommands.xml?

Q: isz MyKBCommands_withAmendedCommands.xml well formed?  I.e. could I just copy it to overwrite MyKBCommands.xml?  Or is occasionally in some transient state so that would not be safe?

BTW, I nearly always manually inspect the MyKBCommands.xml, and have never observed any corruption.  Either my new commands and edits are all there, or not at all. Never partway.  I also run MyKBCommands.xml through xmllint with no problems.

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Perhaps relevant: recently I have been seeing even more KnowBrainer related stalls than usual.  I am fairly sure that KnowBrainer is involved - I can go a day withiout any stalls, using Dragon and my existing KnowBrainer commands, but frequently when I open the KnowBrainer Command Editor just to see what a command does, and then close without saving - i.e. I have just used KBCE to view the command, not edit - I get a stall.  Plus the usual painful stall after using KBCE to edit a command.  If just the latter I would suspect problems rewriting the XML file and/or uninstalling and reinstalling a grammar (command vocabulary) in the running Dragon instance.  That should not be happening if I exit KBCE without making any changes, but perhaps it is.  (I suppose I could start looking at file timestamps...)_

C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\KnowBrainer\KnowBrainerCommands\MyKBCommands.xml

C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\KnowBrainer\KnowBrainerCommands\StatusChanges\MyKBCommands_withAmendedCommands.xml

DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.