[Freecol-developers] Installer failing. Help!

[Michael T. Pope]

With BR#2790 (0.11.2 Installer not completing/wrong directory) we are
seeing the installer hang on windows 8.1 (reported by calebrw,
confirmed by wintertime). This is somewhat puzzling as AFAICT we have
not changed the installer, at least since 0.11.0 and probably longer.

Lacking windows and not knowing anything about the installer, I am at
a loss here. Something we probably *should* have changed is the
shortcuts (.../build/{win,unix}ShortcutSpec.xml) which now invoke
freecol with incorrect arguments following the change to windowed mode
being the default. This seems unlikely to be the cause of the
problem, but wintertime suspects that the hang could be occuring
during shortcut creation so it is a possibility.

Failing that, the obvious thing to do would be to see if there is a
more recent release of the installer and update to that, in the hope
that it is more compatible with windows 8.

This message then is a call for help, as I can not test any changes I
might make here. AFAICT, Stian added the installer in 2006, and
Michael made some modifications in 2007, so I appreciate that there is
no active expertise in this area.

Cheers,
Mike Pope

[Caleb Williams]

As Mike said, this is bad news. Fortunately, Java allows windows users to
run the JAR file. The EXE file gets there too, it just lacks a shortcut.

I personally don't have the Java experience to do anything on that end, bit
I'm happy to test changes to see id we can get this resolved.

If I remember, the installer is an open source Source Forge project, so
they could be some info there.

Post by Michael T. Pope
With BR#2790 (0.11.2 Installer not completing/wrong directory) we are
seeing the installer hang on windows 8.1 (reported by calebrw,
confirmed by wintertime). This is somewhat puzzling as AFAICT we have
not changed the installer, at least since 0.11.0 and probably longer.
Lacking windows and not knowing anything about the installer, I am at
a loss here. Something we probably *should* have changed is the
shortcuts (.../build/{win,unix}ShortcutSpec.xml) which now invoke
freecol with incorrect arguments following the change to windowed mode
being the default. This seems unlikely to be the cause of the
problem, but wintertime suspects that the hang could be occuring
during shortcut creation so it is a possibility.
Failing that, the obvious thing to do would be to see if there is a
more recent release of the installer and update to that, in the hope
that it is more compatible with windows 8.
This message then is a call for help, as I can not test any changes I
might make here. AFAICT, Stian added the installer in 2006, and
Michael made some modifications in 2007, so I appreciate that there is
no active expertise in this area.
Cheers,
Mike Pope

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[Michael T. Pope]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:14:23 -0600

Post by Caleb Williams
I personally don't have the Java experience to do anything on that end, bit
I'm happy to test changes to see id we can get this resolved.

Any chance then you could try the attached patch? It just fixes the
shortcuts, so if it works we have a big win, but if (as expected) it does
not we have at least eliminated one difference. The test would be to
apply the patch, run "ant dist", and try the installer it builds.

Cheers,
Mike Pope

[Caleb Williams]

Post by Michael T. Pope
Any chance then you could try the attached patch? It just fixes the
shortcuts, so if it works we have a big win, but if (as expected) it does
not we have at least eliminated one difference. The test would be to
apply the patch, run "ant dist", and try the installer it builds.
Cheers,
Mike Pope
Done. Unfortunately I receive the following error messages. I'm not sure

what I'm doing wrong, if anything. I am running the latest version of Ant,
and the JDK 1.8 u 25.

I applied the diff via NetBeans and it seemed to go okay.

[Michael T. Pope]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:59:06 -0600

Post by Michael T. Pope
Done. Unfortunately I receive the following error messages. I'm not sure
what I'm doing wrong, if anything. I am running the latest version of Ant,
and the JDK 1.8 u 25.

The error message is showing a failure to build the doco, which is
unsurprising and probably not fatal. Check the dist/ directory to see if
it built an installer you can try. Alternately, ISTM that the doco build
can be disabled if you run ant with an extra argument:

-Dprint.manual.is.up.to.date=true

Cheers,
Mike Pope