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[Derek Read]

Addam has suggested we add a new board, tentatively titled “Hot Fixes”.

The idea is to post MCR, EXE, DLL and other files to address various urgent issues in products. Putting this stuff on the forum seems to make sense but the current boards don't really fit the bill.

People suffering from a particular issue might find a fix here (ie: the XFRunner.dll) but will have to go through some kind of manual procedure to get it installed. Upgrades and patches with proper installers will not be distributed this way.

The idea being that:
1. We want to provide timely fixes for urgent issues.
2. We want to limit dev and QA effort.
3. We don't want to eat into maintenance revenue. If you can get everything you need here why buy maintenance?

So, we will caveat these with appropriate language stating that the code is “beta” or “unofficial” or something similar.

Currently we have been stating something like this:

Unofficial Patch:
This patch restores the functionality present in previous releases. This is an unofficial patch, meaning that no installer is provided to aid with installation and removal. It must be installed manually by copying a file into your XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 installation. Administrator rights will normally be required to do this on most Windows installations (no different from a “true” patch, upgrade or software installation).

We plan to include this or a similar fix with our next official release.

Right now we are sending hot fixes directly to clients. However, we have posted one that is of use to many people on the forum here (prompting this discussion): http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,1110.0.html

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[Su-Laine Yeo]

Great idea!

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[mag3737]

This is an EXCELLENT idea.

One request:  Name each hotfix with a unique ID of some kind so that when we roll out something like an SP1, we can clearly and concisely mention which hotfixes have been included.  I'm thinking of the way EMC does it with Webtop, having Hotfix #xyz1234 or whatever, although I don't really recall the precise workings of it in their case.

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[Derek Read]

Addam has been making MCR hotfixes that are uniquely numbered with some combination of date, etc, so we could reuse those.

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[XMetaLOldTimer]

Addam has been making MCR hotfixes that are uniquely numbered with some combination of date, etc, so we could reuse those.

E.g. xmee60_20101102.mcr, xmee60_20101116.mcr

This filenaming-format was intentional for a very important reason…it makes for predicable load-order of patches placed into the AuthorStartup folder.  Second, it allows a patch to patch or supercede an older patch.

Unfortunately, we cannot rename binaries like XFRunner.dll or xmetal60.exe.  But, there is an internal version number that I typically change so the binary can be identified.

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[XMetaLOldTimer]

“XMetaL Automatic Updates” could become a reality…

If the forum postings here were crafted in a very controlled/specific format, it should be possible to build a call-home bot into XMEE that checks this forum and automatically notifies the user if a new patch is available.

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[mag3737]

i was not really referring to having unique names in the particular files involved in any given hotfix.  rather, each hotfix should have some kind of ID associated with it (which could, e.g., be part of the forum topic title as in “Hotfix #abc3737”).  there would have to be some additional tracking along the lines of

Hotfix#	Files	Description
abc3737	xmee101010.mcr	Fixes the bug where every occurrence of “mag” is auto-corrected to the string “37-boy”

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[Derek Read]

Sounds like it would be fairly easy to standardize on format for titles like that.

Also remember that the forum supports RSS feeds (and ATOM, etc), so we could maybe use that to get a list of “fixes”. For example (this board):
http://forums.xmetal.com/?action=.xml;type=rss;board=15;limit=255

There is not way to show only new postings unless we don't allow people to reply to them. However, I think in that case the worst you would see is what appears to be the same thing more than once (title-wise).

So, Addam, perhaps we could build a simple RSS reader and integrate that somewhere. Perhaps a special control, or maybe via XFT would be less risky. No idea how to read these things at the moment but I guess the content served up is “really simple” 😉

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[Derek Read]

I'm a little hesitant about building something into the software. Kind of makes it permanent and website stuff tends to be not so (historically in our case anyway). The one savior here is that we wisely (somehow) managed to peg the forum to xmetal.com

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