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Beta release for developers

You can check the log file, the manual shows the location of that file.
 
Ok sorted out. I had actually 2 sceneries with the same name on 2 different drives and the autogen folder was of course created in the inactive one... ;)
So I confirm that still works but as you have seen as well with the current build one needs to do a bit of cleaning in the input files to avoid FSX crash in case of duplicate definitions.
 
Yes, I'm working on improving the merging to prevent those crashes.

But it's always a good idea to only include your own definitions only.
 
"But it's always a good idea to only include your own definitions only."

Yes I concur with that but in practice you will see some situations where autogen definitions will be duplicated in the files to be merged. My test with France VFR and Orbx products was not random, as Orbx has natively included some FVFR autogen definitions in their descriptions files so imagine France VFR developers want to use ACM for packaging new releases, they will face the same issue (i.e. a FSX crash upon start up) even if they only include their proprietary definitions. My suggestion would be that ACM check for duplicates and retain only one set of definitions for the merged files.
 
Yes, I'm working on it. But the current design is that if a scenery like orbx has not been made for ACM, then those autogen configuration files won't be merged either. They are just installed the normal way and ACM will remerged the sceneries that use ACM. In that case it will not crash.

So I never considered that somebody not the developer will adapt a scenery for ACM. But maybe that's not the best assumption.
 
I hear you but it will only work if all the developers play the game at the same time and decide to amend their installers to comply with ACM. So in reality as ACM is supposed to merge and consolidate autogen definitions from different sources, the base file (before appending any custom definitions) should be the default FSX/P3D files. The issue is that for most users these files are no longer the default ones and have already been amended by a few sceneries (Orbx to start with but also many others). So that's why even if I agree with you that this tool should work as it is - provided developers comply with the way the input files should be formatted - it would be great to have the possibility of merging files with duplicate entries (and then maybe let the user decide which ones to retain the case may be) if they are not the default definitions. This is just my suggestion and would love to hear from other people here, but if this tool can avoid crashes because one developer has not 100% played by the rules I guess it will be even better.
 
Hi,

No, I don't expect eveyr addon to use this tool directly. But that's exactly my point.

If let's say an Orbx scenery is installed, than the base configuration the tool will use is the Orbx one. There is no problem to merge other configurations into it (as long as these only contain the custom definitions). So that will not give a crash.

The problem starts to happen when the Orbx configuration files are used as the "delta" to be merged into the base configuration. But that's a use case I never considered before.

But I agree that the tool should be tolerant to users trying to use it slightly differently and should not crash. I have some ideas already on how to fix it, just need to find some time to code it :)
 
If let's say an Orbx scenery is installed, than the base configuration the tool will use is the Orbx one
Click to expand...

That's exactly my point here as well. As things stand at the moment Orbx configuration files include custom autogen definitions from 3rd parties (at least France VFR ones as mentioned in a post above) so even if France VFR guys set up a configuration set with their custom definitions only, ACM will make FSX crash as duplicate entries will be found vs the "base" Orbx configuration. So unless Orbx files restrict themselves to their own definitions, ACM won't work as it should and thus it would be good to add some tolerance in the tool for these situations (that can happen between developers and not only simple users like me). This being said, if Orbx decides to endorse ACM for their future installers, they will hopefully "clean up" their configuration files and thus this problem should not happen anymore.
 
Hi,

I see what you mean. I don't think the crash will happen in the case some 3rd party definitions are already present, I think it only happens when (part of) the default configurations are modified and thus updated. But I'm not sure. I'll make sure the tool can handle both situations.

Including autogen definitions from other developers is a bad idea IMHO. In this example with FranceVFR definitions in Orbx, it would be a nightmare for FranceVFR to ever update some of their definitions, since the old one could be installed installed again by an Orbx product. But even ACM can't fix that completely, since it depends on the order sceneries are listed in the scenery.cfg in that case.
 
I have fixed the merge issue now, so the crash is gone. Only the tool works much slower now, so I need to optimise it a bit more. I hope to have a new test version here soon.
 
Hi all,

I have uploaded a new version of the tool to the first post of this thread. The merge issues reported before should be fixed now and the performance is good as well. So please have a look at this new version.

I plan to now prepare an installer for the tool, so that developers can include that installer in their installer. I hope to have a test version of the installer soon :)
 
Hi Arno, I had some time to test the new beta and used the same input files as before (cf my previous posts) but this time without cleaning the default definitions to see if this version can handle the merging of these files.
Unfortunately the merging process did not succeed and when I look at the log file I see the following:

Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index
00:16:42 | at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException()
at FlightToolkit.SimProp.PropertySet.Merge(PropertySet mergeSet)
at ASToFra.AutogenConfigurationMerger.SPBMerger.MergeConfigurations(PropertySet globalSet, PropertySet mergeSet)
at ASToFra.AutogenConfigurationMerger.SPBMerger.ProcessSceneryFolder(String folder)
at ASToFra.AutogenConfigurationMerger.AutogenConfigurationMerger..ctor(String[] args)

My guess is that again some definitions (non default) are duplicated but wanted to have your insight first as the previous release would have proceeded without error message but ultimately caused an FSX crash.

Thanks
Y.
 
Hi,

Let me check that part of the code and see what could go wrong.
 
Hi,

I had a look at the code, but I can't directly see where it goes wrong. Could you maybe send me the configuration files that cause it? Hopefully I can then reproduce it. I'll send you my email address by PM.
 
Hi,

Thanks for sending the file. I have found and fixed the bug now. I'll see if I can get a beta installer ready soon, else I'll post a new ZIP to test.
 
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