i do have -DdevMode=true. we're 50% of the way there:

as expected, by removing -Dlabkey.externalModulesDir="D:\labkey\server\customModules", i eliminate the redundant loading of the folder XML. I can also see live changes to text-based files in the EHR module, as expected from -DdevMode.

The problem is that other text-based modules in \server\customModules are not being loaded since removing the externalModulesDir line. any way to get these to load w/o redundantly loading the EHR code? is there some sort of flag i may inadvertently have in the EHR module that is causing it to load as a file-based module? can i add some flag to prevent it from being loaded as one?