Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="elliottmc" data-source="post: 1022159" data-attributes="member: 14268">Hi,&nbsp;As part of an internal discussion of updating skins, it seems we have a number of issues.&nbsp;1. The different versions of a plugin may require different skin files, so that only having the latest and greatest version of a skin available might not work for everyone.&nbsp;2. If we install skins which provide support for many plugins, we have loads of skin files installed that we simply don't need.&nbsp;In order to get around these problems, I propose a repository with files for the individual plugins/skins.&nbsp;For example, we might have&nbsp;Titan_MPTVSeries_x.y.z.zip&nbsp;and then MP would check if it has installed skin files for the plugin, and if not it will download them based on the installed version of the plugin. It will probably do this at startup.&nbsp;There are a number of problems with this approach, and these would need to be resolved. The main one is who can actually code this! Volunteers?&nbsp;Problems I can see right now:&nbsp;1. How to deal with this for a HTPC that is not online - need to provide a mechanism for offline updates (provide a list of urls to download?&nbsp;2. How to check for all possible installed plugins, retrieve their version numbers and check against a new database for installed skins?&nbsp;3. What if the user does something stupid, such as deleting a file? When we install the files, do we need to keep the database up to date with installed files, so that if the user deletes a file, it can be fixed on the fly?&nbsp;4. If the user has the plugin skin files installed, but the skinner puts out a new version, how will MP know that there is a new version available?&nbsp;First of all though, do skinners think this is a good approach, and how would you envisage this working for you?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="elliottmc, post: 1022159, member: 14268"] Hi, As part of an internal discussion of updating skins, it seems we have a number of issues. 1. The different versions of a plugin may require different skin files, so that only having the latest and greatest version of a skin available might not work for everyone. 2. If we install skins which provide support for many plugins, we have loads of skin files installed that we simply don't need. In order to get around these problems, I propose a repository with files for the individual plugins/skins. For example, we might have Titan_MPTVSeries_x.y.z.zip and then MP would check if it has installed skin files for the plugin, and if not it will download them based on the installed version of the plugin. It will probably do this at startup. There are a number of problems with this approach, and these would need to be resolved. The main one is who can actually code this! Volunteers? Problems I can see right now: 1. How to deal with this for a HTPC that is not online - need to provide a mechanism for offline updates (provide a list of urls to download? 2. How to check for all possible installed plugins, retrieve their version numbers and check against a new database for installed skins? 3. What if the user does something stupid, such as deleting a file? When we install the files, do we need to keep the database up to date with installed files, so that if the user deletes a file, it can be fixed on the fly? 4. If the user has the plugin skin files installed, but the skinner puts out a new version, how will MP know that there is a new version available? First of all though, do skinners think this is a good approach, and how would you envisage this working for you? [/QUOTE]

Verification