Hi Peter, On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Peter Pfalzer wrote:

The idea of having an updater is great! I downloaded and installed it right away, but I'm not sure if it's doing the right thing. Every time I start one of the programs (athena, gifeffit,...) the updater accesses the internet and tells me that there are updates available. I click on "install updates" and it's downloading and unpacking a .exe and a .lib file. Nothing else seems to change. The version number of ifeffit printed out by the "about"-function of athena is still 1.2.2 and on every new start of the programs the "updates available" notice pops up again. Am I doing something wrong?

Hmm, it sounds like you're doing everything right. It also seems like it's mostly working, but not actually installing the updates. Here's what is supposed to happen (once the updater program is installed): 1. try to download and read the 'latest version number' from http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/updates/update.dat currently, this reads '001'. If you're not connected to the internet, it should time-out. 2. read the local current 'update value' from the file IFEFFIT_DIR/updates/update.dat, where IFEFFIT_DIR is the directory Ifeffit got installed to. 3. if it could read both values and the web version is greater than the local version, it pops up the display saying that updates are available. If the local version and web version are the same, the updater is done. 4. if updates are needed and you click the 'install' button, it tries to downloads zip file(s) named http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/updates/ifup_XXX.zip where XXX is the update level. The program shows its progress in a text window, so you should see it trying to download and then unpack these zip files. For ifup_001.zip, it should unpack these files: ifeffit_10.exp ifeffit_10.lib ifeffit_10.dll updates/ifup_001.txt 5. It then deletes the local copy of the zip file, and displays the contents of updates/ifup_001.txt, which reads Update #1 applies changes between 1.2.2 and 1.2.3: - setting path_index now makes the selected path 'the current path', and re-evaluates defined variables and path parameters to use that path's values for reff, degen, etc. - fixed error with spline() passing pre1,pre2 to pre_edge() 6. finally, it writes the current version to the local file updates/update.dat. If more than 1 update is needed, it will download and upack them in order. In the batch files that launch the ifeffit applications, the updater is now run just before each ifeffit application. Given all that, and your symptoms, I'm not sure where the trouble is happening. It sounds like it is trying to download the zip file, so it's getting pretty far. Some things to look for are: 1. does the IFEFFIT_DIR/updates directory exist? If so, is there a file update.dat? What does it contain? 2. you could try downloading http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/updates/ifup_001.zip and unpacking it (relative to the main Ifefffit dir) by hand. Does that work? As this overwrites ifeffit_10.dll, athena should report that it's using ifeffit 1.2.3. What are the size and date for ifeffit_10.dll? 3.If that works, you could try writing '001' to IFEFFIT_DIR/updates/update.dat That should stop the updater from trying to install updates. Of course, the problem might return at the next update, so this isn't a very good long-term solution. Hope that helps, and sorry for the trouble. Is anyone else having this problem? If so, please let me know, either here or through private email. --Matt

Hi Peter, On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Peter Pfalzer wrote:

Hi Matt,

thanks for your response! I've continued playing with the updater in the meantime and tracked the problem further. The updater behaves exactly in the way you describe in your mail when it is run not from within the batch files but by simply doubleclicking the updater executable. The update is installed properly. When it is started by the batch scripts, however, the main application starts up before the updater is finished and the latter stops working. When I prevent the main program from starting successfully (e.g. by deleting the ifeffit dll) the updater works fine. Maybe there is a file access problem once the dll is used by athena, gifeffit, etc. ?

Hmm, maybe -- I don't think there is an access problem, but I'm not 100% sure. I just verified that the updater works for me as expected on two XP machines: I installed ifeffit-1.2.2.exe, ran athena and it said it was using 1.2.2. Then I downloaded and ran the updater installer (ifeffit-updater-1.0.exe), which ran fine. Then running athena popped up the 'Updates available, should I install them?' window. Clicking 'yes' brought up the second window, repeating that there was 1 update available. Clicking 'Install Updates' showed the progess of downloading and unpacking the files. At that point the updater waited until I pressed 'Dismiss' before it exited. When this happens, the main application (say, athena) launched, saying it is using 1.2.3. That is, I'm not sure how the main application can start before the installer exits. I haven't been able to make that happen. Sorry for all the trouble. --Matt