new installer is HORRIBLE

[completelyhis]

I know I'm grumpy this morning because it's raining, I've only had 3 cups of coffee so far, and Alfred is dead because of something. That being said, I do this this is a legitimate gripe. Here's what happened this morning.

1. added WMP plugin update via updater.
2. restarted HS to apply changes.
3. when it restarted, it launched the installer app, freezing HS until i completed the dialouge.
4. the installer said, "I can't do this, homeseer is running." NO DUH!!!! of course Homeseer is running, because HOMESEER told me to restart HOMESEER so the update to HOMESEER could be installed, but i guess it couldn't install the HOMESEER update completely. I told it to continue anyway, and it told me i'd have to reboot the computer after wards. AWESOME! so, after restarting HS to get HS update, I'll have to CLOSE HS, and reboot the whole dang PC. BRILLIANT!!!!!
the installer app sat FOREVEVER only showing me "cancel" as the only option I could choose. the green progress indicator was all the way done though. After waiting way too long i decided to look behind the window, and guess what, another stupid dialogue box waiting for me to tell it whether or not to activate the plugin when it is done installing or something stupid like that. IT WOULD HAVE WAITED UNTIL HEAVEN AND EARTH PASSED AWAY, for crying out loud. how hard is it to have a window show up in front, or at least make a stupid little flashy thing in my task bar at the bottom, so i know something stupid happened.
5. I clicked on whatever, let the install finish, closed HS, and rebooted.

please fix this. it upset the delicate balance of my morning, now i'm all cranky, because when my computer rebooted it went into "I didn't boot up right, i'll try to figure out why" and being late for work already because of a kazzillion restarts/reboots, i had to leave the house with Alfred in a coma.

[nightwalker]

That would make me a little cranky in the morning too, I do a lot of my updates and maintenance in the mornings after everyone is gone and before I go off to work. I gotta give you credit, I'm not sure I wouldn't be taking the day off before I went off and left it dead, I get a little anal about that stuff.

I would think in Washington you'd be used to that rain thing so maybe it's more the coffee and the dead Alfred getting you down.

[completelyhis]

That would make me a little cranky in the morning too, I do a lot of my updates and maintenance in the mornings after everyone is gone and before I go off to work. I gotta give you credit, I'm not sure I wouldn't be taking the day off before I went off and left it dead, I get a little anal about that stuff.

I would think in Washington you'd be used to that rain thing so maybe it's more the coffee and the dead Alfred getting you down.

Believe me, it was not easy leaving the house that way. i'm watching the clock, i'm going to do some troubleshooting via proxy on the phone with one of my boys as a soon as it's not too early to call.

the rain actually just started last week, we were blessed with a little extra sunshine this year. gone now, oh well.

any chance we can pull HST away from Touch long enough to fix the installer prog?

[nightwalker]

Good luck with that, they're still trying to get the pre-release version straightened out. Their priorities are their own, I don't always get how they get set and sometimes it seems back-wards to me but It's been a long time since I enjoyed the ride on the bleeding edge, these days I stick with what works and leave the bleeding to the younger people with strong hearts and no WAF to consider.

[completelyhis]

My 10 year old son went to the bat cave and brought Alfred back to life!

well, i do know i'm not the only one who has complained about the new installer, so maybe it will catch some traction.

Alfred's alive...4th cup of coffee, feeling better :-)

[TeleFragger]

My 10 year old son went to the bat cave and brought Alfred back to life!

well, i do know i'm not the only one who has complained about the new installer, so maybe it will catch some traction.

Alfred's alive...4th cup of coffee, feeling better :-)

glad you got alfred back.... however 4th cup of coffee??? I am a 2 pot of coffee person a day minimum... and im all caffeined up right now.
HAH....

[nightwalker]

glad you got alfred back.... however 4th cup of coffee??? I am a 2 pot of coffee person a day minimum... and im all caffeined up right now.
HAH....

That pots a day thing seems to be a Jersey trait. That may explain all those circles you guys are so fond of over there.

[completelyhis]

glad you got alfred back.... however 4th cup of coffee??? I am a 2 pot of coffee person a day minimum... and im all caffeined up right now.
HAH....

remember tho, i'm pacific coast, so it's only 8:30 (as i start the 5th cup)

[Wadenut]

Methinks you might want to consider decaf.... or perhaps Xanax
Sounds like the air was blue around the parsonage this morning. My dad was a minister so I know what that's like.

[completelyhis]

no, come on. you know a pastor's family is always perfect :-)

Funny, after my 5th cup, someone walked in with a double shot mocha for me, then i met my wife for lunch at costco, where we really enjoy the $1 mocha!

probably done for the day now.

Ian

ps. what denomination did your dad serve with?

[Bill Brower]

had to leave the house with Alfred in a coma.

All-fried?

[completelyhis]

Bill,
LOL. Yes, Alfred was AllFried. nice.

healed now, though. my 10 year old fixed it.

hey, my bat cave is looking cleaner...wanna get together for coffee?

[Bill Brower]

How is the bat cave cleaner? You scrape the bat guano off the floor?

Maybe Monday the 24th?

[Wadenut]

no, come on. you know a pastor's family is always perfect :-)

ps. what denomination did your dad serve with?

He was a United Baptist minister.
We could swap war stories. Honestly, when we were kids, my brother and I would have caused Mother Teresa to sin.

[Rick Tinker]

Well here's our $0.02 on this...

The bottom line is that HS cannot be running when plug-ins are updated, you already know that. The problem is that the updater (the ASPX part) has not worked out very well because of the ASPX part, which I never liked in the first place. For some strange reason it does not work or does not work right on some systems, and we only have Microsoft to ask why, and so it is not likely we will ever know why. So...

Rich being the industrious "let's try something else" kind of fellow, he started using the EXE installer with new plug-ins because the development environment (Visual Studio) made it pretty easy to create the installers. He likes it, I could take it or leave it. My problem with using them is that the part of the updater that lives in HomeSeer works great - it does the installation part before HomeSeer loads the plug-ins, so it is taking care of everything nice and neat - score 1 for the old updater.

But then, everybody started the flames again about how we do not have uninstall support in HomeSeer. Rather than write a bunch of new updater code to do that, Rich pointed out that the installer EXEs have that built into it. Score one for the EXE installer, and the fact that we are just trying to get you guys (and a few of you gals) what you want.

So we are in this hybrid period where we decided to go with the EXE installers, but do not yet have the updater modified so that it will directly load the installer EXEs, but will download for later installation the older updater packages. We planned on fixing this after we got 2.3 out the door, but of course that has been a lot longer in the tooth than planned, to say nothing for the monumental undertaking that the creation of a best in class touchscreen interface is.

So when we updated the music plug-ins to bring some Music API technology in-line with all of them, they were re-done using the EXE installer, but everybody is used to looking for them in the updater. People have been downloading updates to iTunes from the message board links for quite some time while the updater package languished in an old version.

So, I told Rich I would create an updater package that ran the new installers - yes, it has its shortcomings, and perhaps they are too great to use that method given your experience with them. I have run EXE installers from an updater package before, but those always knew that HomeSeer would be running - this one was set up to make sure that was not the case.

As for the dialog box in the back, that got me too - but we're using Microsoft installer technology so we have to be forgiving - I will see if Rich can find a way to specify that dialog box to be in front of all of the other windows.

So here is the problem, go ahead and let me know what you suggest we do to fix it:
1. If we modify the installer to not look for HomeSeer running, so it can be used with the updater, then we cannot publish that same installer on the message board because people will try running it while HomeSeer is running, and we don't want to have to build 2 installers every time.
2. If we don't download a package with the updater and instead provide a link to the installer EXE for you to download, then that would work but you would have to remember to run the installer as it would no longer be automatic. You would also be downloading the installer EXE using the computer your web browser is running on, so if your HomeSeer computer were not accessible via the network from that computer, then you would have to put the installer on some sort of media to take it to your HomeSeer computer.

What are your preferences, or what other ideas do you have?