Minor Gripe: Auto Update?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Innomen

Don't be a moron.

If I could choose what I care about I would sit around in total bliss until my body needed tending at which point I would pour in some rice and water (which I would make my favorite food) take a cold shower (which would be my favorite activity besides sitting) and evacuate any wastes, at which point I would resume sitting in total bliss until the body needed maintenance again.

I am so sick and tired of snide "Want the same thing I want, think the same way I do." responses to problems or feature requests.

Newsflash: I'm not you and I do care. Both of which should have been obvious since you didn't type this post and I did.

Need I also alert you to water being wet and where bears typically defecate?

Anyway...



That's a very good response, thanks for sharing.

I'll just turn off the notification since at its current rate of update I can expect it to want one every time I launch the app, which is pretty much whenever I've finished a book heh. I'll just bookmark the download page and launch it as a first step.

Honestly I expected there was a good reason, but still I'd like to see an auto update. But as others have said it's a very minor issue.

For the record I adore the app. It is without peer.

Thanks to the author, and to toddos for the constructive reply.

Unsubscribed.

Worldwalker was pointing out a third option that many may have preferred over yes or no only. Also, his opinion is a valid one even if it is not the same as ours. The purpose of the survey is to find out what the majority of people prefer. If there is a majority of people who do not care, then leaving out that option would skew the results of the survey, destroying any accuracy it might have had.

[jasonfedelem]

I'd rather Kovid spend his time working on cool new features than wasting time on creating an installer. Its a minor inconvenience to download the file each time.

Kudos to Alexander Turcic's post.

[troymc]

No.

1) I agree that there are higher priorities than something like this - including cool new features!

2) I don't like software updating behind my back. I want to know what's changing, when, and why. (I support Calibre in a professional environment - I don't like surprises.)

3) I would not be against an "Update Me" button that would handle the whole thing, but I have a shell script w/panel icon that handles that for me.



Troy

[jesscat]

Could someone - Starson17 maybe! :-) - perhaps explain briefly what the Windows .bat update file consists of and what I need to do to run Calibre from source to make it work? I'd love to set this up and am reasonably technically competent but have never done this in Windows and am unclear about how to begin.

Maybe including some sort of instruction about this in the FAQ would be a compromise of sorts - satisfy at least some of the people who might like quicker/easier updating without the need for as much work for the developers?

[itimpi]

Not quite sure what you are asking here? The calibre User Guide has very clear instructions on how to set yourself up to run from Source under Windows.

Once you are running from source you then create a batch file that contains the Bazaar command to get the latest Calibre source.

[jesscat]

Originally Posted by itimpi

Not quite sure what you are asking here? The calibre User Guide has very clear instructions on how to set yourself up to run from Source under Windows.

Is this "Setting up a Calibre developer environment"? I had looked at the user guide TOC, but it didn't occur to me that that was what I was looking for; I was looking for "running from source" or something. It hadn't occurred to me that what I need to do is set up as if I were a developer, though perhaps it should have.

I'll work on this, since I would like to be able to update more easily but am not sure I'd be willing to use an automatic updater - still, though, for people like me who aren't developers and who might not think to look in that section if we're thinking about updating, it could be helpful to include in the guide something like, in order to update more quickly and easily you can set up a Calibre developer environment and then create a batch file, etc. etc.

It's just a thought.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by jesscat

Is this "Setting up a Calibre developer environment"?

Yes. I've seen Kovid refer to the difficulty of setting this up as "trivial." I wouldn't use that exact word, but it's not hard
Install bazaar, add the environment variable and run the command described in "Setting up a Calibre development environment"

I'll work on this, since I would like to be able to update more easily

The improved update speed is an unintended advantage of running from source. bazaar checks to see if you changed any files, then checks if Kovid has changed any, then downloads the changes. It took me 38 seconds last time ... hold on, I'll update now and time it. ..... 86 secs. I haven't updated in a while (since 0.7.5). The download took 70 seconds (other d/ls in progress), the rest of the time was checking and merging.

The batch file has this in it:

c:
cd \my_source_dir\src
bzr commit -m "Starson17 Updated src"
bzr merge

I may change the commit message depending on if I've changed any code.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

The batch file has this in it:

c:
cd \my_source_dir\src
bzr commit -m "Starson17 Updated src"
bzr merge

@Starson17: you might want to add a
bzr commit -m "Merge from trunk"
or something like that after the merge. The second commit will ensure that all the changes you just downloaded are registered in the repository. It will be much easier for you to see what you changed ('bzr status' and 'bzr log'), and should it become necessary, to back out those changes ('bzr revert').

@jesscat: if you use but never change the source, you can change starson17's script to be even faster. Try:

c:
cd \my_source_dir\src
bzr pull

The pull command copies the changes from the original repository (in our case the repository on launchpad). Because it works only if you haven't made changes, it doesn't need to take the time to work out what is new, what changed, etc. If you *have* made changes, it will complain and do nothing.

Final note: you know that you are running from source if there is an asterisk next to the version number on the upper right corner. No asterisk -- something isn't set up right.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

@Starson17: you might want to add
bzr commit -m "Merge from trunk"
or something like that after the merge.

Good idea. Thanks.

[kovidgoyal]

Be aware that running from source has a slight breakage risk. Every once in a while a commit gets made that is unintentionally broken/buggy.

Also running from source means that only the python part of calibre is updated. Binary modules are not.

So ideally, update from source only soon after a new version is released and periodically update calibre normally as well to make sure you get binary updates.

[jesscat]

Thanks everyone - perhaps I'll time my next "normal" DL and install and compare; have to decide whether, particularly in light of the fact that Kovid recommends periodic normal updating in any event, it seems worth it to me set this up. I appreciate all the help!