Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 7:46 pm

Well, I tried to upgrade the 3rd party AQDock docking system today to see if it would fix some of the weird crashes that people get when closing CMUD sometimes.

It was a complete disaster. Apparently, the saved layout format has changed in the new version, rendering all existing docking layouts invalid (and which cause all sorts of problems if you try to load them anyway). And they don't mention this in any of their release notes, which I find very annoying.

After messing around with this for a few hours, I have decided to go back to their previous version (which I saved, just in case). I just cannot tolerate having incompatible layout files. I do not want all existing CMUD users to have to recreate all of their session layouts (I certainly don't want to do that for my own layouts).

What I'm going to do instead is compare the differences in the source code and see what changes they made, and make any bug fixes in my existing source code until they can fix their upgrade to be compatible (yes, I have emailed them a nasty note). But that's another few hours of work down-the-drain :(

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:57 am

It's not so much the fact that they changed it that I find perplexing (because it's entirely possible that there're problems with the current format) but that they didn't include a routine to import and update old files if need be and that they didn't tell anyone about it. It'd be like you changing CMUD so that everyone's pkg files didn't work any more and not mentioning it anywhere. Bizarre.

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:34 am

Actually, I'm embarrassed. It turned out to be my problem. I normally keep close track of the modifications that I make to 3rd party components, but in this case there were some changes to the stream format that I had made myself. So it's my fault that it didn't work.

I still went back to the previous version because I didn't want to mess with it anymore on release day, but I think I know what changes I forgot to make that caused the problems. I did a "diff" between their new source and my existing source and when I was adding some of their bug fixes to my existing version, I discovered the stuff that I had forgotten to change.

So, I'll try the upgrade again next week and hopefully it will go better. In the meantime, I *did* incorporate some of their fixed in the 2.09 version.

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:47 am

Personally, as annoying as remaking my layout would be, if its just a one time deal i could cope with it.

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:43 am

I could as well, but I'm glad you were able to find it.

And it's OK that you forgot some code, with all the lines of code in CMUD I can imagine how hard it is to keep it all straight especially when you sometimes have to fix 3rd party bugs.