a 2nd set of cleanups and optimizations #2513

Job	Run time
Check for Max SDK	2s
macos-x64-internal-release	22m 12s
linux-x64-internal-release	9m 48s
macos-x64-internal-debug	19m 13s
linux-x64-internal-debug	11m 11s
macos-x64-external-release	21m 27s
linux-x64-external-release	18m 3s
windows-x86-internal-release	1h 17m 38s
maxplugin-${{ matrix.cfg.str }}-${{ matrix.cfg.sdk-version }}	0s
windows-x86-internal-debug	56m 2s
windows-x86-external-release	59m 29s
windows-x64-internal-release	1h 3m 14s
windows-x64-internal-debug	1h 15m 37s
windows-x64-external-release	1h 13m 2s
	8h 26m 58s

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