Binary patches for Windows [poll]

[Pentarctagon]

Oh, my bad. So you're just opposed to more options; to widening the field for those who choose not to invest the time compiling or learning how to compile.

this is a poll based on one person's opinion (your own). just because one person votes that they are not interested doesn't mean that they don't want additional options to exist.

[Insinuator]

But that's what it implies. The question is NOT "Are you interested in using binary patches for Windows releases?". The question is "Are you interested in Wesnoth having binary patches for Windows releases?" It has nothing to do with whether you'll use them or not personally. I, for instance, will probably not use them, at least for a while. But I am very interested in seeing this option progress and become more refined.

[Pentarctagon]

why would anyone be interested in having something they are never going to use?

[ancestral]

why would anyone be interested in having something they are never going to use?

Even though I wouldn't get to use it, I'm interested in other people having affordable healthcare, having access to Internet and having enough food and good nutrition

Zaroth, care to share how you implemented your combo updater? Do you have a separate case for each possible version of 1.8 installed and binary patches for each? Or is there something else that is handled automatically by the NSIS software?

[Pentarctagon]

comparing healthcare and food to a wesnoth updater seems like a bad comparison

[Zaroth]

I tried it out to move from 1.8.4 to 1.8.5 and wound up with a spare copy of northerners.ogg (the one changed music file) in data/core/macros (instead of data/core/music). Seems likely the patcher put it in the wrong place.

This is really weird. Since the paths of changed files are generated by an automatic tool, it seems very unlikely that it would confuse macros/ with music/. And yet, I could reproduce this bug, even though everything in the generated .nsi files seems right (i.e. no northerners.ogg with macros/). Well... Thanks for spotting this, I'll look more into it.

why would anyone be interested in having something they are never going to use?

As you probably noted, I'm quite interested in Wesnoth having these patches (any modern game weighing more then 100 MB should have them imho) - and yet the only times I booted Windows this year were in April, all for the sole purpose of testing/developing this autopatcher. Lack of splitting "Interested" option in poll based on platform is there for a purpose, you know.
In short, Windows is the most popular PC gaming platform out there and having automatic patches for games there is a de facto standard. I care for how many people play the latest version on Windows, so I'm interested. Simple.

Zaroth, care to share how you implemented your combo updater? Do you have a separate case for each possible version of 1.8 installed and binary patches for each? Or is there something else that is handled automatically by the NSIS software?

As written in the first post, I used the nsispatchgen. Since it only generated patch incremental patch installers (i.e. with real binary diffs inside), I added a --replace option to this tool to generate patchers who package the whole files from new version instead of generating diffs and applying them afterwards. Then I run this tool on Wesnoth 1.8.0 and 1.8.5 folders to generate patchFiles.nsi, which you see included in the NSIS script linked from first post. The patchfiles.nsi is the file that contains all the dirty work of replacing old files with new versions. Since it was generated between 1.8.0 and 1.8.5, it will also take care of all versions in between, possibly doing some redundant work of replacing files which didn't change between e.g. 1.8.4 and 1.8.5 when patching 1.8.4.

This results in a bit larger patch installers than incremental ones, but in my opinion the flexibility gained (and lack of user confusion) is worth it.

As for my modifications to nsispatchgen, the devs agreed to include my changes in the next release - so I won't bother posting my patch, just wait a little for a new release of nsispatchgen on sourceforge.

[Insinuator]

why would anyone be interested in having something they are never going to use?

Because some people can look beyond themselves to the benefit of others.

EDIT: I'm redacting myself. Too mean.

[Gambit]

Alright, alright. Everyone just calm down.

[Anonymissimus]

why would anyone be interested in having something they are never going to use?

Because some people can look beyond themselves to the benefit of others.

EDIT: I'm redacting myself. Too mean.

If it pleases you:
Upon voting I did actually consider voting for "I'm interested" since if I could not build wesnoth on win that'd be my choice. There will possibly also be times when I may lose my built environment somehow.

Atm I just had the idea you may be trolling.

[Max]

[*]Uninstaller works, it isn't broken (patch doesn't replace the uninstaller binary). However, it won't remove any files added between patched release and the release you patch up to. There aren't many of them, since it's the stable branch, but there are some (at least between 1.8.0 and 1.8.5).

is there a reason why you didn't include uninstall.exe?

there's one potential problem: the way wesnoth is designed it's not enough to make sure all files for a specific version exist and are up to date but also that there are no files left from a previous version (it's quite common that whole directories are included). this installer wouldn't care for files that have e.g. been added in 1.8.2 but got removed in 1.8.3. i've checked in svn - right now there's no such case.

i really like this approach.

[Insinuator]

Is there or are there plans for a similar application for the development line (i.e. 1.9.x)?

[Zaroth]

Is there or are there plans for a similar application for the development line (i.e. 1.9.x)?

Indeed, there are. However, due to the quick changing nature of the development line, it was decided to provide incremental patches instead of all-inclusive ones. That means that they are essentially the same thing as xdeltas, but more user-friendly and quicker to install. Check the first post for a test 1.9.5-1.9.6 patch version.

[Loyalist]

You're doing the right thing.
Is there a patch to 1.8.6?

[Zaroth]

@Max
Yeah, it's because my patch installer doesn't update registry entries (yet). And the uninstaller.exe binary from 1.8.5 would look for registry entries of 1.8.5 and therefore wouldn't work.

@Loyalist
No, there isn't. I wanted to solve a few issues (e.g. these registry entries) before releasing it, but other coding tasks in Wesnoth proved to be very absorbing... I'll try to get something out "soon".
Anyway, this now is just a pilot run - I hope to get the patch generation automated before 1.10, which will result in more timely releases.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

I know this has been something a lot of people have wanted for quite a while, and it's awesome to see someone actually stepping in and doing something about it! Kudos to you, Zaroth.

Personally, I don't have a problem (internet-connection or otherwise) with downloading the whole thing each time a new version comes out, but if such a patch as you're working on was available, I would certainly use it instead.