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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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Dear Nusphere,

I'm using PhpED since many years now and I'm very pleased with the constant stream of updates.

There's a few things however that bother me a bit, nothing serious, but something I notice every time I update PhpED. I hope you guys appreciate this kind of feedback.

- I'd love to have a command line option to skip the installation of PHP 4 and PHP 5.2 (I always remove them afterwards because I'm luckily in a position to only work with the latest stable PHP version.

- I'd prefer if the installer wouldn't steal the UI focus. It's impossible to chat or reply to an email while the update is running.

- I'd love if the installer would check if there is an actual change to php.ini before asking me if I want to overwrite it. I never touch them.

- PhpED doesn't have an icon in the "Uninstall a Program" window.

- Last but not least, the installer isn't signed. Looks a bit wonky on Windows 8, I get surprised every time.


So there, that's my installer pony list! Thanks for reading!

Bernd
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Joined: 24 Jul 2009
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Not sure if I'm correct on all of this, but:

- The install of the various versions of PHP are probably for the internal SRV server. Probably one of those things you can ignore rather than uninstall? Agreed that a Custom install might suit some people.

- Most installers are based on third-party products. Not sure if the PhpED installer is, but it certainly uses the Microsoft MSI services and with various modules being installed, I doubt you could stop all of them stealing focus. Having said that, I installed the latest v12 earlier today on Win 7 and got frustrated because I was responding to emails and it did not steal focus & was waiting for my input. I've just installed on Win8.1 and didn't have any issues with focus being stolen.

- Ironically when it didn't steal focus for me, it was waiting for input to confirm the overwrite of those php.ini's; I thought the install was taking a long time! I'd also rather it didn't ask if there were not any changes to these files (I don't change them either)

- I can see NuSphere PhpED in Programs and Features in both Win7 and Win8.1, although I wasn't sure if you were referring to just the lack of an icon. I've got quite a few without icons, most of them Microsoft but many others as well.

- The 12021 installer was signed with a Symantec certificate that raised an invalid digital signature error (although the certificate shows as OK) and the latest 12031 is unsigned. None of the previous versions were signed, so I'm guessing NuSphere were attempting to implement signatures and it didn't work out, so they didn't do the latest version. Maybe that is coming soon?
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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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Hi plugnplay,

> - Most installers are based on third-party products. Not sure if the PhpED installer is, but it certainly uses the Microsoft MSI services and with various modules being installed, I doubt you could stop all of them stealing focus. Having said that, I installed the latest v12 earlier today on Win 7 and got frustrated because I was responding to emails and it did not steal focus & was waiting for my input. I've just installed on Win8.1 and didn't have any issues with focus being stolen.

The dialog boxes are not what I meant. When the installer launches the installation of PHP and also maybe the debug helper it steals the focus as if I'd launch it. Right now you need to monitor the installation during the whole process, which isn't you know, "the end of the world", but it's the not kind of stuff I want babysit.

Maybe many things cannot be changed because of various things only Nusphere is aware of, but I think it's valid feedback. I'm not expecting to get everything fixed, just saying that installing is part of the experience.
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Joined: 13 Jul 2003
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You can run it in silent mode, just run with /silent command line option. All other options are listed here:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/ishelp/index.php?topic=setupcmdline
and no, we do not use MSI

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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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Thanks Dimitri,

So /COMPONENTS would allow me to skip the older PHP versions? Could you provide the list of the components you use?
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I provided you the link for the command line options and /SILENT /VERYSILENT options in particular. This way you can install without any questions from the installer,
but playing with /components is the easiest way to screw up the product. I highly recommend you not doing this. You can easily omit something needed or create problems that we can not (and will not) support.

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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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dmitri wrote:
I highly recommend you not doing this. You can easily omit something needed or create problems that we can not (and will not) support.


Are all three PHP versions mandatory? I'm just asking because I'm uninstalling two of them since day 1 I use your IDE and it never occurred to me that it might be a required package.
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Joined: 24 Jul 2009
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It does use MSI for the redistributables. I'm watching an install now and it used MSI whilst installing VC2008 / VC2010. Opening the vc packages also shows the vc_red.msi files.

But I'm not saying that takes focus; my own experience is that PhpED installs seem to run fine in the background except for the php.ini overwrite prompts, which do not set focus but do 'hang' the install until responded to.
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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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Ok,

I've tried out /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES and /SILENT, but they don't prevent "overwrite php.ini?" messages from showing up. My guess is because the three PHP packages are separate installers and the command line parameters don't get passed on.

The log file mentions a SHA1 mismatch, guess it's the custom paths you apply after the setup, the checksum probably applies to the original state.
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Joined: 12 Jul 2007
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plugnplay wrote:
But I'm not saying that takes focus; my own experience is that PhpED installs seem to run fine in the background except for the php.ini overwrite prompts, which do not set focus but do 'hang' the install until responded to.


I'm in Windows 8.1 and watch the installer on the main screen do it's thing while I'm in another program (e.g. Outlook) on the secondary monitor. I do get focus steals multiple times during the setup and - yes - the overwrite prompts don't get focus. I'll experiment with /SILENT and /VERYSILENT next time.
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No, php packages are not mandatory. If you don't use CLI or SRV or php-related functions like PHP Documentor or PhpPear/PhpUnit (hope I didn't forget something), you can safely skip all three php packages.
As of arguments for inner installers, you're correct, we do not pass arguments to them except /LOG which is passed through the environement, quite independently.
But they all are executed with /SILENT option anyway.
As of MSI, it's correct. We don't use MSI in our installers, while MS certainly do use in theirs.

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The latest PhpED installer now has a tick box at the start to control the overwriting of php.ini files, so I've just installed whilst browsing this forum and didn't have to respond to the installer even once Smile
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