Skin MPEI Installers (1 Viewer)

[Dadeo]

I recently installed a number of new skins updated in just the last couple of weeks.

To my dismay, many skins are installing plugins as part of the skin without any prior notice or warning. I understand this is an attempt to ensure compatibility with the skin, and I appreciate that. Imo it is not the best method, but it is about all we have right now. However, in some cases the skin installation installed older versions of plugins and in other cases they installed plugins I do not wish installed. In most cases the plugin already provided an MPEInstaller

Another case is skins that install new Weather logos. These overwrite the existing logos in %ProgramFiles%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\weather but do not backup the original files. I realize the problem really lies in the Weather plugin, which does not support skin logos, but that is not likely to be changed anytime soon.

The MPEMaker includes the ability add Dependencies. You can provide a warning message to users installing plugins with the skin and/or even give them the option to install these or not. For reference, see the excellent way catavolt has done this in PureVision MPEinstaller! It allows users to not only see, but select which options/plugins they wish to install.

I would just like to encourage skinners using MPEI to learn and use these functions so users can choose if they wish to install anything that overwrites content in %ProgramFiles%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal in particular.

Thanks
Dadeo

 

[catavolt]

AW: Skin MPEI Installers

Hi Doug, here is my xmp2 file for PVHD 4.3. From there you can see how to build a safe installer without overwriting plugins with elder versions and to allow the user to choose which plugins to install.
Hope this helps a bit
But stumbled upon this one: If installing a plugin with the skin (e.g. you have chosen to install InfoService), it will be installed as expected.
When installing a next version of the skin, the previous installation will be deleted - unfortunately with all plugins you installed. So if you now choose to NOT install InfoService, you end up with a MP without InfoService...
As this is an unwanted behaviour, I PMed dukus already to give an option in the installer, what to be uninstalled, in case of skins I would prefer to define the skin folder only to be deleted. I think that could be done without big changes and I also think it´s absolutely necessary to have this.
Therefore you will find in my xmp2 that I disabled the option to deinstall before installing the new version.