Installer Changes

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I thought I would make a quick change to the installer to allow it to parse the installed scenery packages and only install what is needed from OpenSceneryX.

Of course, nothing is ever quite as simple as you first think – Parsing the DSF scenery files is fine and once that’s done, building the list of .obj, .pol, .lin etc files to download and install is also fine.  Those bits were straightforward to implement.  However, what I had neglected to think about was that those .obj, .pol, .lin etc files of course contain references to textures, but the OSX installer doesn’t know about the textures until after it has already downloaded the file.

So, this means I’m having to re-work the installer and the library build scripts so that they are more intelligent and know more about the dependancies between files in the library.  I was hoping to get the new installer out by now but this has set things back a bit.

Also, I could still do with an Italian and a Spanish speaker volunteering to translate the installer, otherwise those languages won’t be included in the next release.

13 thoughts on “Installer Changes”

  1. You know guys, individually downloading over 5,000 files, which are apparently uncompressed image files, for an initial install is a bit brain-dead – ever hear of zip files? Tar.gz?

    From the comments it looks like a good package, we’ll see if I ever manage to get it installed.

      • After a couple of hours my system is down from 5000+ to 4000- files to download which mostly appear to be png’s. I’ll take your word for it that they are compressed, but – there is still overhead for every file, and – just how large is this thing anyway? At the moment I’m extrapolating to over 600 Mb, and I’m just glad I’m not paying by the Mb for downloads as many people do…

        • By file size, most of the library is PNGs (which obviously don’t compress very well by zip). The installer is incremental so it detects the files that you have already installed and only installs those that are needed on your system. Obviously the initial download is substantial and an unavoidable hit, but after that upgrades are much faster as it doesn’t download the same files again. You’re correct in that the library is about 600Mb in size, most people say they just leave it overnight.

          As mentioned in the post above, the next version of the installer (I’m working on this at the moment) will have the option to detect which scenery packages you have installed on your system and only download the OSX objects required for those packages. For most people that will massively reduce the download size, though scenery developers will still need to download the whole thing.

  2. Oh, and then there is the less-than-obviously-documented fact that the installer doesn’t work under Win 7 (nor Vista) unless it is “Run as Administrator”. The message “An exception of class NilObjectException was not handled, this application must close now” doesn’t really help most of us.

    Yes, I know there is a passing comment in the blog about undefined “problems” in Vista, creating files etc. There is no reference to the specific error message. You might think about creating a regular product Web page with install instructions, FAQs, etc. – and an installer package at least for the current versions of Windows, i.e. XP, Vista, and 7.

    All in all, it looks like OpenSceneryX lacks professional polish.

    • The latest version of the installer, currently in beta testing, avoids the need to manually run as administrator, as it automatically asks for admin privileges when it runs. If you would like to beta test it, I would be happy to give you a link.

      As for “professional polish”, perhaps if this was a commercial product then I would agree with you, but it is quite a substantial effort to build and maintain the OpenSceneryX library, all done free of charge in spare time for no reward other than contributing something to the X-Plane community.

      If you would like to assist in making it more professional, then I would be very grateful for your help.

  3. Hi,
    I’m really bothered because it seems that you need an internet connection to use the windows installer.
    And on the PC I’m trying to install OpenScenery, there’s no connections.
    Is there a way I can work this out.

    Thanks,
    Dominique

    • Hi Dominique. Yes, all the installers need an Internet connection, as the installer just downloads what it needs to.

      Are you saying that you don’t have an Internet connection, or that the Windows installer isn’t downloading anything?

  4. Is this at least somewhat common so I don’t feel bad?

    “Checking installer version…
    The installer version couldn’t be checked, continuing anyway…
    —-
    Collecting local file information…
    Complete.
    —-
    Connecting to the server and loading the list of available files, please wait…
    There was a problem with the list of files downloaded from the server, please try again later.”

    If it is, I’ll be VERY patient. This is a LOT of work.

    Thanks

    Bob

  5. The Linux installer fails with the following:

    ../Common/plugin.cpp: 6893
    Failure Condition: 0
    The application cannot continue because a needed file cannot be installed. libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    I’m running an up to date Gentoo system with libstdc++.so.6. Just for grins I created a symlink for libstdc++.so.5 and got the same results.

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