Installation

NOTICE: Currently, use of the installer for current Live versions (9>) isn't really supported. Although I have updated the installer for MacOS sometime in the last year, I haven't been maintaining it. Consequently, I'd recommend manual installation for any new users. You can find information about where each file goes here:

Manual Installation

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Before installing Monomodular, make sure you have the most current versions of MaxMSP and Ableton Live installed on your computer. You will also need a license to use MaxforLive (although it is possible to use everything here in Demo Mode).

You may have navigated here from the installer itself, and you're wondering what its all about.

To install all the Monomodular software, just follow the instructions printed in the console window of the Installer patch.

MAKE SURE LIVE'S AUDIO ENGINE IS TURNED ON BEFORE LOADING THE INSTALLER

There are four fields that need to be correct in order for the installation to proceed. They display the file paths to the locations that the files will be copied on your system. If they are correct, the field will be white. If the path couldn't automatically be found, it will say so in red, and you can locate it manually by either clicking on the text or dropping the file/folder onto the box on the left of the text. The default paths for the files:

IF YOU ARE USING WINDOWS 7, SEE BELOW FOR SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS.

Installation Package (all platforms):

This is the data that the installer will copy to your computer. If you downloaded the bundle, it should have been autodetected if you launched the installer from inside that bundles folder. If not, you can either drag the folder from its location to the box on the left side of the text indicating the path, or you can click on the path and choose it from a file browser.

If you are installing from SVN (not available with b993 yet), you must press the "Subversion" button on the right side of the interface, and you will be given a choice of a temp folder where the installer will download the package from its subversion repository. You can delete this folder manually after the installation is complete, or leave it in place until the next time you update Monomodular with the installer (however, its path is not stored....it will need to be reselected the next time you run the installer).

These are the default locations that the installer is looking for. Under most circumstances, this is where things will be:

Here's a video from astarte describing the installation. He's using a Launchpad with Monomodular in the video:

Astarte's video

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MacOS

Live.app             = ~/Applications/Live 8.x.x/Live.app

or                 ~/Applications/Ableton Live 8.app (version 8.3.x and greater)

MaxMSP Folder   = ~/Applications/Max 5

Live Library       = ~/Library/Preferences/Live 8.x.x/Library

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Windows (pre win7)

Live Folder = \Program Files\Ableton\Live 8.x.x

MaxMSP Folder = \Program Files\Cycling '74\Max 5.x

Live Library =\Documents and Settings\USER\Documents\Ableton

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Windows 7

Live Folder = \Program Files\Ableton\Live 8.x.x

MaxMSP Folder = \Program Files\Cycling '74\Max 5.x

Live Library = \users\username\documents\ableton\Library

(see further Win7 specific instructions below)

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Once the installer has verified that the installation paths that you've chosen to be valid places to put its files, you can press the "Install" button to begin moving files to their proper places. The terminal window on the right will indicate exactly what is being sent to the [shell] object in the patch, and if you are on MacOS, the return result from the shell will be displayed.

The installer will copy its payload to new folders if the correct folders don't already exist. For every new revision, a new set of folders will be generated. This is good and bad. It means that none your old installation will be harmed, so there will be no 'broken' sets when you upgrade. It also means, however, that if you upgrade as often as revisions are made, you will end up with a bunch of deprecated folders. For now, you will have to delete these manually. You can refer to the Manual Installation page to see what files go where, and what you can delete.

The good news is that Monomodular takes up very little room, so the only downside is a bitter of clutter (mostly in the Control Surface Scripts folder inside your Live installation....this can be a bit frustrating if you change things around often, but otherwise, is completely harmless).

If you try to install a Monomodular revision over that same revision, the installer will not overwrite any files. It should, however, replace any files that might have gone missing through erroneous deletion or movement.

Once the installer is finished, it will indicate that you need to restart Live. So....restart Live already.

WINDOWS 7 INSTALLATION

The installer should be able to autodetect the file locations in the b993 installer, but it probably won't be able to copy them unless you run Live with Administrator priveleges. You can do this by right-clicking Live's application and choosing "Run as Administator".

However, this causes its own set of difficulties, because you can't move files into Live by dragging and dropping while its running as Admin. If you run into these problems, its best to run Live regularly first, drop the installer into Live's Presets (under Max MIDI Device), then restart Live running it as Admin, and run the installer at that point. You'll still have to select the installer payload, but it should autodetect everything else.

Sheesh.

Limitations

All I can really say is: READ THE DIRECTIONS. I've done my best to make the installation as painless as possible, and I've included as much documentation both with the Installer patches and in this Wiki as I can think to.

That said, this is the first 'm4l Native' installer that I've seen in the wild, and I'm doing all I can to make it compatible with as many systems as possible. Worst case scenario with this installer is that you have to choose your own paths before you hit the "Install" button, which still eases the process of having to manually install all of the files.

The newest installation will get tagged with the revision number (e.g. blahblahb992r030112) , the suffix being the date that it was compiled for release. That means it should add to/overwrite any old data.

Currently, we're still testing out the Installer on different systems to see what works and what won't. There may be problems with Lion and Win7, because I don't have an installation of either at the moment and I'm therefore relying on end user input to work out the details. If you have one of these operating systems and want to help out, please contact me via email and we'll work on it.

Otherwise, unless your system is "REALLY" weird, the installer should work fine. I have no experience with trying to install to external partitions, but you should have all this stuff on the root partition anyway. Regardless, let me know how this works out (or doesn't).

Python Persistence

One of the things I've learned about Python and Live recently is that it caches all the modules on load, and likes to fill in the gaps of missing data with what it has cached. This means if there are more than one module with the same name in its search paths, things can get tricky. For this reason, I highly recommend that when installing new versions of the betas, you clean out the old ones from your MIDI Remote Scripts directory. Nine times out of ten it won't make a bit of difference, but if you're having problems with things not working the way they are supposed to, it is the first thing I'd try to get things back to normal.

Live Crashes

I've experienced on several occasions (in OSX) that the installer will crash Live if the log.txt file is either too long or has bad file references. If the installer is crashing Live on your system, you might try deleting Live's log.txt file. It won't hurt anything, and its solved the only crashes that I've ever encountered using the installer. Live will create a new log.txt file the next time you start Live, and the installer will be able to do its thing without problems.

Root Volume

Don't expect the installer to work on Windows if you've got your base installation on a drive other than C:\. It just probably won't.

Manual Installation

If the installer just doesn't work for you for whatever reason, you can always put the files where they go manually. Here's some more information on how to do that:

Manual Installation