We have an eclipse feature that is licensed and the license is handled by our own code. The user can go in on our update-site and upgrade his feature. The problem we face is when the user's license needs to be updated before he can use the new upgrade.
What I want to do is to validate the feature version against the users license and warn the user that his license needs to be updated before he install.
I thought I would do this using a custom eclipse p2 touchPoint action validateLicense.
Example:
My code is called, where I validate the version against the user's license. If it fails I warn the user and he can then cancel the installation.
So my first question is:
Do I get this right, or is it some other way to do this?
My second question is pretty basic:
Where do I tell eclipse to run my code?
I have looked here at eclipse help where they explain what it is. But I don't understand where to put the information to run my code? Is it in the feature.xml.
Lastly:
Is there an example how to create and use p2 touchPonts?
I implemented a custom action as shown here and I have a system that seems to work. I left out "touchpoint" extension as it's unnecessary in my case, but the rest is the same.
My action is executed during install phase of my feature (instructions.install) but maybe configure phase could work too. Collect phase did not work.
The action is executed during installation process, after the download was already performed. Ideally it would be before the download but it's not a big issue for me. Returning an error status from the action cancels the install. It leaves some downloaded files around but they do not get activated and are probably removed later by p2's garbage collector.
I also managed to do some more interesting things. My actions plugin has a dependency (optional and non-greedy) on my main plugin. So the install works like this:
Actions plugin is downloaded
Custom action is executed
The action detects whether my main plugin is already installed and if yes, it calls into it to retrieve licensing info. The main plugin has to expose an API for the action. The action also checks main plugin's version to detect whether the API is there or not.
The action now can decide whether to proceed or cancel the install. It can even interact with the user using Display#syncExec (this is what the code in checkTrust phase does so I think it's safe). If needed, the action could also detect whether the install is headless.
Some gotchas:
Action itself must be versioned. It's the version you declare in plugin.xml and p2.inf files and it's different from plugin's version. I just replace 1.0.0 with the same version my plugin has. This way the latest version of the action plugin is always downloaded before being executed. This is great because now any problem changes to licensing rules can be implemented in actions plugin.
Actions API changed between Eclipse 3.5 and 3.6. I will probably drop support for 3.5 as it's pretty old anyway.
Actions plugin should probably be signed. It's the case in my case. The system seems almost too powerful to me as just pointing Eclipse to an update site gets it to execute downloaded code.
I still need to test how this works with different versions of Eclipse and other IDEs. I saw a strange (non-blocking) error with 3.6. However the results are promising and it looks like the system might actually work.
Touchpoints are executed at installation time, which means that the resolution (validation) has already happened. I'm not sure they would help. What about creating an Installable Unit (IU) (or Eclipse Feature) that represents the license the user has installed. Then you would put a dependency from your product to that license.
For example, create an IU called com.mycompany.license (1.0.0). You would create another one called com.mycompany.license (2.0.0). When you installed a license, the appropriate IU would be added to the profile.
Now, when you go to install you product, the new version of the product would require license version 2.0.0. If this license was not installed, the resolution would fail.
Does this make sense? Do you think this would help?
Related
I am trying to upgrade the site from v 7.6 to v. 7.15.1.
I have done the upgrade on localhost which included updating the db.
Now I transferred my files from localhost o the test site and on there I am getting an error in log:
ERROR Umbraco.Core.UmbracoApplicationBase - An unhandled exception occurred
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Invalid object name 'umbracoUserLogin'.
and I can't login to the backoffice.
It seems to be looking for umbracoUserLogin on test while it doesn't exist yet because on test the db is not updated yet.
How to update the db on test in this case while the files have already been updated on localhost and transferred to test site?
I have done 2 umbraco upgrades recently; one is from 7.5.7 to 7.13.1 and the recent one is from 7.13.1 to 7.15.1.
During my upgrade; I have seen this problem and fix in this issue can help you for your problem(and I didn't see this problem again after doing the upgrade again, but this time checking all the auto changing files and accepting them one at a time-see details below for this) but coming back to your question; "What's the best way to upgrade from umbraco 7.6 to 7.15.1(including db upgrade)"; here are the steps that you should follow;
Create a backup for your project and your umbraco db before you start. If you are using Git, then things will be super easy for this.
Open up Nuget Package Manager for your Umbraco project and do the package upgrade using the Nuget Package Manger window or the consol. Search for UmbracoCms version 7.15.1 for your case.
Once you start doing the upgrade, you will see some popup windows that will ask you to approve some auto file changes(including some config files changes). As you don't want to lose some of your pre-upgrade settings, don't accept them all or discard them all, check all of them one by one, and as a general rule; if you don't have any custom changes for those files, then simply approve the change, otherwise, check your changes and make sure you don't loose anything and discard some of these file changes as a result.
Once you're done with your UmbracoCms upgrade(which will automatically do some dependency package upgrades), build your project, make sure all is looking good then go to your local project's umbraco back-office url, this will trigger the rest of the umbraco upgrade process and simply complete the upgrade steps by following the screens- at this point your umbraco db changes will be done automatically and it is possible that you might have some issues with some old corrupt cached files, if this happens, then simply delete App_Data/TEMP files and App_Data umbraco.config file and try again. If you see some other problems during the installation, check the logs(browser developer tools can be handy to understand the problems in this case), and fix them one at a time. It is possible that you don'T need some of your old web.config settings and they might cause some issues, simply comment out those lines and see if this will fix some of the issues.
Once you are done with you local upgrade, deploy your code to your testing environment, and go to the umbraco url of your test environment and follow the screens to complete the installation for your testing environment. If you see any problems, please check my notes for step 4 above.
Do your umbraco upgrade for other testing environments(QA, UAT, Training etc) and complete your umbraco upgrade tests. Once the tests are done, then you are ready to go live. After the live deployment, you will have to complete the umbraco upgrade one last time, but this time for the live system.
Always get your back-ups for each environment before you do the upgrade, so you will be ready to rollback your changes if things go wrong(which might happen as you're doing a big umbraco upgrade).
Final note; there are some good articles for this, please take a look to understand the process better. Good luck!
i'm having some issues getting modules to work on my app - I keep on getting told that the requested module cannot be found.
It is entirely possible that i'm not installing the modules correctly - so, for the purposes of this question:
Once i've downloaded the zip file from git hub using the green "download" button, what do i do to import the module into my project? Not how do i tell tiapp.xml to use the module - just what do i do to install it?
Can you please run through using the facebook module found at https://github.com/appcelerator-modules/ti.facebook
thanks!
Inside the zip file of the download you'll see there is a folder called modules. This is the same folder that is in your root of the project.
So, an iOS module should be installed in the /modules/iphone folder. Once added, you can add Facebook to your app like this:
<module platform="iphone">facebook</module>
If you want to specify a version you can do so like this:
<module platform="iphone" version="1.1.0>facebook</module>
note: I made up the version number
You can also add it through the tiapp editor in Appcelerator studio, although it doesn't always seem to find the module. This might be a bug in studio though, usually it works great.
HMMMM
Two main issues here, one directly relating, the other less so.
Issue 1
The link i gave to get the codebase from github is wrong - well, it gets the codebase, but not in a form that can be used as a module. It is, in fact, the uncompiled version.
Versions for download can be found here.
So that takes care of issue one, what about
Issue 2
The latest version for use is a bit broken. Seems someone (from the appcelerator team???) decided to make the latest 6.0.1 release have a minsdk of the (at this time) as-yet-unreleased version 6.0.0, and sets the apiversion to 3.
This breaks the current release of 5.5.1, so for anyone reading this prior to 6.0.0 for appcelerator, you will want to use this release version.
I have an Ionic app running with the basics of Ionic and running it in the browser by doing ionic serve, but I want some new stuff and run it trough the grunt serve command, also has the feature for JSLint, I am already using this scss this: https://github.com/diegonetto/generator-ionic/ and I see that have everything I want, how do I install that in my project?
Take into account that my project is almost done, I have almost 85 % already done.
Is this the part I need to follow up:
Upgrading
Make sure you've committed (or backed up) your local changes and install the latest version of the generator via npm install -g generator-ionic, then go ahead and re-run yo ionic inside your project's directory.
The handsome devil is smart enough to figure out what files he is attempting to overwrite and prompts you to choose how you would like to proceed. Select Y for overwriting your Gruntfile.js and bower.json to stay up-to-date with the latest workflow goodies and front-end packages.
does this will bring some complications ? is there something else I need to know ?
I use the same generator and enjoy using it. With that said, I would not recommend starting to use a generator until you've made a complete backup of your project.
Even then, I'd recommend creating a brand new project using the generator then migrating your existing code into the newly generated project. While migrating, you should be modifying your code to match the generator conventions as you go. This gives you the most control and will make sure that you learn the conventions of the new project structure. Upgrading instructions are really meant for people who already use the generator and are just upgrading to a new version of the generator. They are not applicable to you.
I have taken the org.eclipse.equinox.p2.examples.rcp.prestartupdate project and adapted it for use in my RCP application. I then setup an update repository that gets updated as part of my nightly build.
When I open my application it goes through the motions like it is updating - it finds the update site, generates an uninstall and install operand for each bundle correctly and says that it finished with no errors. The problem is that the plugins never actually get installed in the plugins folder even though the profile gets updated (a subsequent run states there are no updates). Next time my build runs it correctly identifies there are updates, but the same thing happens again.
I have spent days debugging and the only thing that looks out of the ordinary (not that I fully understand what is going on) is that during the final configure phase none of the TouchpointData objects have any instructions so it doesn't look like configure is doing what it should.
I really have no clue where to look next and would like to see if anyone else has any ideas.
Update:
I finally figured out what was going on.
The problem started when I built my product without the generating the metadata repository. When building through Eclipse I didn't check the "Generate metadata repository" in the export product wizards because I didn't need a p2 repository, just the product. The problem is that without checking that button the product does not install as P2 enabled causing side effects such as not generating a profile among other things.
I tried to compensate for this by manually creating a profile in code which I have since found out is a really bad idea. My original problems were created because my profile wasn't set up correctly.
Once I started exporting the product with "Generate metadata repository" checked the update started correctly installing the new plugins.
The problem I have now is that although the plugins are being installed correctly, the executable is getting trashed and I cannot launch my application any more. I am building my update site through Hudson and the binary folder which is present when I use the Eclipse Export Product wizard is missing. I am assuming that is what is going wrong now.
Any ideas why the binaries would not be building in my headless PDE build?
Figured this out also. I had assumed that all I needed was the individual launcher plugins for the platforms I wanted to build on. Since I was trying to understand the process I was copying over plugins one by one to the build server. It turns out to include the platform specific binaries in the build you need to have the org.eclipse.equinox.executable feature from the delta pack. Once I added that to the build the binaries started showing up in the output. With the binaries the update mechanism works exactly as intended.
I had assumed that all I needed was the individual launcher plugins for the platforms I wanted to build on. Since I was trying to understand the process I was copying over plugins one by one to the build server. It turns out to include the platform specific binaries in the build you need to have the org.eclipse.equinox.executable feature from the delta pack. Once I added that to the build the binaries started showing up in the output. With the binaries the update mechanism works exactly as intended.
I'm trying to customize the location of the user.config file. Currently it's stored with a hash and version number
%AppData%\[CompanyName]\[ExeName]_Url_[some_hash]\[Version]\
I want to it be agnostic to the version of the application
%AppData%\[CompanyName]\[ProductName]\
Can this be done and how? What are the implications? Will the user lose their settings from the previous version after upgrading?
I wanted to add this quoted text as a reference for when i have this problem in the future. Supposedly you can instruct the ApplicationSettings infrastructure to copy settings from a previous version by calling Upgrade:
Properties.Settings.Value.Upgrade();
From Client Settings FAQ blog post: (archive)
Q: Why is there a version number in the user.config path? If I deploy a new version of my application, won't the user lose all the settings saved by the previous version?
A: There are couple of reasons why the
user.config path is version sensitive.
(1) To support side-by-side deployment
of different versions of an
application (you can do this with
Clickonce, for example). It is
possible for different version of the
application to have different settings
saved out.
(2) When you upgrade an
application, the settings class may
have been altered and may not be
compatible with what's saved out,
which can lead to problems.
However, we have made it easy to
upgrade settings from a previous
version of the application to the
latest. Simply call
ApplicationSettingsBase.Upgrade() and
it will retrieve settings from the
previous version that match the
current version of the class and store
them out in the current version's
user.config file. You also have the
option of overriding this behavior
either in your settings class or in
your provider implementation.
Q: Okay, but how do I know when to
call Upgrade?
A: Good question. In Clickonce, when
you install a new version of your
application, ApplicationSettingsBase
will detect it and automatically
upgrade settings for you at the point
settings are loaded. In non-Clickonce
cases, there is no automatic upgrade -
you have to call Upgrade yourself.
Here is one idea for determining when
to call Upgrade:
Have a boolean setting called
CallUpgrade and give it a default
value of true. When your app starts
up, you can do something like:
if (Properties.Settings.Value.CallUpgrade)
{
Properties.Settings.Value.Upgrade();
Properties.Settings.Value.CallUpgrade = false;
}
This will ensure that Upgrade() is
called only the first time the
application runs after a new version
is deployed.
i don't believe for a second that it could actually work - there's no way Microsoft would provide this ability, but the method is there just the same.
To answer the first question, you technically can put the file wherever you want, however you will have to code it yourself, as the default place the file goes to is the first of your two examples. (link to how to do it yourself)
As for the second question, it depends on how you deploy the application. If you deploy via a .msi, then there are two hashes in the properties of the setup project (that the msi is built from), the 'upgrade code' and the 'product code'. These determine how the msi can be installed, and if it upgrades, overwrites, or installs beside any other version of the same application.
For instance, if you have two versions of your software and they have different 'upgrade' codes, then to windows they are completely different pieces of software regardless of what the name is. However if the 'upgrade' code is the same, but the 'product' code is different then when you try to install the 2nd msi it will ask you if you want to upgrade, at which time it is supposed to copy the values from the old config to a new config. If both values are the same, and the version number didn't change then the new config will be in the same location as the old config, and it won't have to do anything. MSDN Documentation
ClickOnce is a little bit different, because its based more off of the ClickOnce version # and URL path, however I have found that as long as you continue to 'Publish' to the same location the new version of the application will continue to use the existing config. (link to how ClickOnce handles updates)
I also know there is a way to manually merge configs during the install of the msi using custom install scripts, but I don't remember the exact steps to do it... (see this link for how to do it with a web.config)
The user.config file is stored at
C:\Documents and Settings>\<username>\[Local Settings\]Application Data\<companyname>\<appdomainname>_<eid>_<hash>\<version>
<C:\Documents and Settings> is the user data directory, either non-roaming (Local Settings above) or roaming.
<username> is the user name.
<companyname> is the CompanyNameAttribute value, if available. Otherwise, ignore this element.
<appdomainname> is the AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName. This usually defaults to the .exe name.
<eid> is the URL, StrongName, or Path, based on the evidence available to hash.
<hash> is a SHA1 hash of evidence gathered from the CurrentDomain, in the following order of preference:
1. StrongName
2. URL:
If neither of these is available, use the .exe path.
<version> is the AssemblyInfo's AssemblyVersionAttribute setting.
Full description is here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379611.aspx
(I'd add this as a comment to #Amr's answer, but I don't have enough rep to do that yet.)
The info in the MSDN article is very clear and appears to still apply. However it fails to mention that the SHA1 hash is written out base 32 encoded, rather than the more typical base 16.
I believe the algorithm being used is implemented in ToBase32StringSuitableForDirName, which can be found here in the Microsoft Reference Source.