Oolite Bulletins

phkb wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 5:15 am

I've had a bit more of a play with OoliteStarter, and have a couple more observations.

1. The UI can become unresponsive after clicking "Install" for an OXP (particular large ones). I found myself, on several occasions, wondering if I'd clicked the button at all. You should, at least, change the mouse pointer to an hourglass if you start a process that might taken more than a second (like downloading a file). Even better would be to queue the downloads into a background process, so I can keep clicking on other OXP's to download.

True, this is done without multithreading. It was on my list and I never looked at it again. Thank you for the reminder.

phkb wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 5:15 am

2. By using OoliteStarter, you effectively break the built in Expansions manager. Because you put a file version into the name of every file you download, particularly into the ManagedAddOns folder, the Expansion Manager doesn't recognise them when it tries to update to a new version, effectively putting two versions into the ManagedAddOns folder. Then, when you go back to the main menu your screen gets filled with red warnings about there being two versions of the OXP present.

My suggestion is, if you're going to do anything inside the ManagedAddOns folder, do it in the same way as the Expansion manager does. Filename is the identifier with ".oxz". If you want to keep with the "@version" in the filename, do it in the AddOns folder, so that the Expansion Manager knows not to do anything with it.

The point is, I should be able to switch back and forth between using the ingame manager and OoliteStarter, without issues.

I guess in early versions it was my intention to allow having multiple versions in parallel, then activating/deactivating them as the player pleases.
As I do not use the in-game manager the impact did not occur to me. But I will change it to be compliant.

phkb wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 6:51 am

Can you easily export the results as *-overrides.plist files? Writing scripts in Excel is my bread and butter.

Back in myyyyy day, that would have been a job for Perl. And the answer to your question is no. Ever since I renounced the way of the programmer, despite some auspicious beginnings writing entire programs in GWBasic in the 80s, then this and that in C and HTML in the 90s, I can no longer do much of anything. I'm all manual.

It's liberating. I'm free from the never-ending torment of the programmer's headaches, free as a bird with no underpants!

Perl is my current "bread and butter" )

hiran wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 7:10 am

phkb wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 5:15 am

I've had a bit more of a play with OoliteStarter, and have a couple more observations.

1. The UI can become unresponsive after clicking "Install" for an OXP (particular large ones). I found myself, on several occasions, wondering if I'd clicked the button at all. You should, at least, change the mouse pointer to an hourglass if you start a process that might taken more than a second (like downloading a file). Even better would be to queue the downloads into a background process, so I can keep clicking on other OXP's to download.

True, this is done without multithreading. It was on my list and I never looked at it again. Thank you for the reminder.

Multithreading is in now. All the expansions can be installed/removed/activated/deactivated in the background.
For single expansion handling this is likely of little relevance, but when activating an expansion set it may take minutes until everything is up to date.
While testing that I caught an even bigger issue than the compatibility between in-game expansion manager and OoliteStarter.

Imagine a player exports his set of expansions. Either to share it with fellow players, or to share it with developers so they can repeat the setup and analyze the problem. As part of that set there is an expansion - I will now call it "Expansion X" in version 1.23. However the developer of that expansion meanwhile released Expansion X in version 1.25. In the catalog that is downloaded from https://addons.oolite.space/api/1.0/overview/ only Expansion X 1.25 is available - the other one has been removed as it is superseeded.

But now when anyone imports the expansion set that was exported, OoliteStarter cannot download Expansion X 1.23 any longer.

Big question: How shall this be treated?
- Is it an error as the same state cannot be recreated?
- Or is it ok to silently download the upgraded version 1.25?
- Or should we have kept Expansion X in versions 1.23, 1.24 and 1.25 still in the catalog?
- Or are there other ways how to handle such gaps?

My suggestion would be to inform the player that an updated version of a mod is available and will be used in preference to the outdated version.

phkb wrote: ↑Sat Sep 09, 2023 2:00 am

My suggestion would be to inform the player that an updated version of a mod is available and will be used in preference to the outdated version.

Informing the user is probably the best. After all expansions may become unavailable as well. Plus even if it is available as per catalog, the download site might be down. So a lot more situations to be covered...

Just updated to 0.1.20 from a somewhat older version. All the settings are still in place (correct directory locations), but none of the expansions are showing. "No expansions found"

arquebus wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 7:34 pm

Just updated to 0.1.20 from a somewhat older version. All the settings are still in place (correct directory locations), but none of the expansions are showing. "No expansions found"

Could you let me have the logfile? It should be in $HOME/.Oolite/Logs

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 8:20 pm

Could you let me have the logfile? It should be in $HOME/.Oolite/Logs

Here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6kv8axrq ... 1nd1u&dl=0

arquebus wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 12:10 am

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 8:20 pm

Could you let me have the logfile? It should be in $HOME/.Oolite/Logs

Here you go: ...

Thank you. I see two issues here:
- One of them is in the part that makes OoliteStarter follow redirects (depends on the server's response).
- One of them is with expansions that use manifest.plist in XML format

I'll try to get both fixed soon.

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 7:25 am

arquebus wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 12:10 am

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 8:20 pm

Could you let me have the logfile? It should be in $HOME/.Oolite/Logs

Here you go: ...

Thank you. I see two issues here:
- One of them is in the part that makes OoliteStarter follow redirects (depends on the server's response).
- One of them is with expansions that use manifest.plist in XML format

I'll try to get both fixed soon.

Would you like to test the latest build v0.1.21-elul.2?

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 9:37 pm

Would you like to test the latest build v0.1.21-elul.2?

That solved it!

arquebus wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 3:10 am

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 9:37 pm

Would you like to test the latest build v0.1.21-elul.2?

That solved it!

Thank you for the feedback.

BTW, what do you think of the UI in general? How is it compared to the in-game Expansion Manager?
Do you think it could be improved or made easier?

hiran wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2023 6:47 am

BTW, what do you think of the UI in general? How is it compared to the in-game Expansion Manager?
Do you think it could be improved or made easier?

I'm still very lukewarm on the visual/color-based tag system as it's currently implemented. Not having the tags (or some representation of them) visible in the list itself makes the tags only about 50% useful.

Also, and maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place, I can't see if it's possible to update the expansion list (download the current list) from the Starter itself. Is this an automatic process on launch of the Starter? Is it not implemented? Is this what the "Reload" button does? (If the latter, then "Reload" should be a different word - Retrieve or Renew or something like that.)