aum.haa

I hate Windows.  With every inch of my, uhm….hatred.  That said, I love everybody that supports this project, and I know at least half of you are Windows users;  I don’t slight you.  I just can’t get anything done on that platform.  Simple ergonomics are usually my biggest gripe, but at least I can run most things in a virtual machine and benefit from at least some of my usual OSX comforts.

Yesterday, I got some reports that Windows permission issues are fubarring the b994 installation process on Win7.  I thought about it for a bit (and have been thinking about it even longer, believe me), and decided that I’d embark on creating a better solution for Windows users….the Mac installer works pretty darned well, after all, why can’t the Windows installer match its convenience?

Well, as it turns out, it just can’t.  I got sucked into the “Black Hole of Almost There….” yesterday, and only managed to discover that Windows is just plain “STOOPID” where permissions are concerned.  Maybe if I was a “real” programmer, who wrote in low-level languages everyday, this would be trivial for me, but add onto that the fact that writing a Max-external (the solution to the problem, unfortunately) isn’t really even trivial if you write low-level everyday of your life.

I’ve made improvements, it looks prettier, and it doesn’t flash ugly command-prompt boxes at you, but it still doesn’t work as expected half the time.  SOOOOO, if you’re installing things on Windows, follow a few guidelines:

a)  If you’re using Win7 or above, run Live as Administrator.

b)  Place the installation package folder in Live’s Library before starting it.

c)  Don’t blame me, I really DO try.

I’m sure someday it will work right, but honestly I’d rather spend time improving the content than building an installer and writing boring operational level code, so I’m going to leave you with what I’ve got for the moment and come back to it when I’m not quite so angry at the Windows platform.

Oh, yeah:  I’ve updated the installer with a new version, and retagged the version, so if you were having problems installing things yesterday you can try again:  this won’t overwrite anything, it will just install a newly tagged version.

I’ve re-enabled SVN support in the installer for both platforms.  If you want to stay abreast current changes, or open the individual patch content in the m4l editor, I recommend using the SVN button to download from the repository.  This will give you the most current versions of the patches I’m working on in the “Unfrozen Patches” subfolder, which are more easily editable in m4l.  This should solve problems for those of you that were unable to open the frozen patches on Windows.

I’ve also added support for the “Dev” button, which will add a folder to your “clippings” menu in Max for some easy pasting of useful abstractions.

Let me know if the new installer catches anything on fire….

 

a

 

P.S.  …so, that’s what I did instead of shooting videos for you this weekend.  Hmmph.

 

~ by amounra on November 12, 2012.

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