I had to restart my computer this morning, and so had to restart PhpED. When it came up, I noticed immediately that it was using a color scheme from weeks ago. Confused, I just quit the IDE, pulled hl.cfg from my backup, and put it into the PhpED folder, replacing the version that was there. I restarted the IDE, and same problem. What the...?!?

Next, I noticed that I still had the original hl.cfg in the PhpED folder that I created as backup when I customized my colors. I made it the current version, and... still no changes.

It was at about this time that I remembered the discussion on the changes with Vista. I'm running XP SP2, so that shouldn't apply to me, but I read over them anyway. The config folder caught my eye, so I checked and sure enough, there was a config folder in my PhpED folder now. Checking its properties, it looks like the folder was created on August 1, which is about the time, IIRC, that I upgraded to 5.0.1.

Inside the config folder were the usual motley of config files, including hl.cfg. I replaced that file with my backup file, and PhpED was back to normal. So, this raises several questions:

1) Should I be seeing this on XP?

2) Is this change documented somewhere? At the very least, a mention of these sort of upgrade snafus in a read me shown during installation would be extremely helpful, and an additional automatic migration would make it better yet.

3) I noticed that other settings whose files were in config, such as my accounts and my layout, were unaffected, which seems to imply that PhpED copied them in. What happened to hl.cfg? Note that not all my color settings were reverted, just some of them.

4) Why didn't I have a problem during the first five days? Perhaps more to the point, why didn't I have a problem on first launch after upgrading?

5) The old files are all still in the PhpED directory. Is it safe to delete those?

yes. Since version 5.0.1, PhpED stores all settings in config subdirectory. If you run as administrator (except Vista), this subdirectory is in c:\program files\nusphere\phped\
In case if you run as LUA (least user account) or if you run as any type of accounts under Vista, it stores all the settings in <user profile>\nusphere\phped\config, while c:\program files\nusphere\phped\config directory retains only default copies.


An automatic migration is supposed to happen. If it did not, it was a bug. And no, we do not document such changes as structure of files, structure of registry, their location etc. I wonder if you ever saw any software where it was clearly documented.


All configuration files (read files that the IDE may change) are supposed to be in config.

Did you run 5.0 or 5.0.1?


If you ran 5.0 since 5.0.1 was installed, it might create the files again in PhpED's directory or installer failed to delete them after it copied all to config subdirectory. It's safe to delete copies outside of config directory as they are not used by 5.0.1.

Is there any way to get PhpED to do this on XP? This is standard behavior over on OS X (and apparently now on Vista), and the segregation from the program makes backups and multi-user support much easier. Of course, in Windows, you still have to deal with that nasty thing known as the registry, which also complicates backups, but hey, a step forward is a step forward.



Absolutely, I see it all the time among well-documented software programs, and I've written such documentation myself many times. It used to be that these programs would list everywhere they put files, to make uninstalling, installation validation, and installation migration easier, but as OS design has started placing files more regimentally, this practice has fallen off. Nowadays, details need not be done for *every* file, just the ones that the user may want to interact with, ones that change after installation. Things like config files, for instance.

For an example, see page 12 of BBEdit's absolutely superb documentation:

http://valdez.barebones.com/pub/manual/BBEdit_85_User_Manual.pdf

See also their 8.0 release notes here:

[url]support/bbedit/arch_bbedit80.shtml[/url]

where at the top is documentation of a file structure change.

I believe it was just the other day when someone was asking how to migrate settings around to multiple users; such documentation would have avoided him asking the question.



5.0.1. 5.0 isn't even on my hard drive anymore, as it was overwritten by the 5.0.1 installer. As further proof, I was using the new 5.0.1 features, like the ctrl-click one.



Okay, thanks.

sure. Just update 'Home' entry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NuSphere\PhpED5.0 with C:\Documents and Settings\MyName\Application Data\nusphere\phped or something more or less approrpiate

Sweet, thanks! I'll try that out ASAP.

I'd love to see this extended to things like templates, too. That way, we wouldn't have to worry about the installer errantly overwriting our own versions, and we could easily access the latest defaults if desired. And, of course, it's another step to achieving one-folder-for-all-user-settings nirvana. We can't get there with the registry, but this would be the next best thing.