Let's face it , the whole system of assets that NV3 have created can be described as a curates egg, a dogs breakfast , or a lash up, or a mix of all three. It's never really been thought through, it's just been bandaided over and over again so we end up with his melange of freeware , payware, items being hosted on external sites , defunct items unable to be updated, etc, etc, it's probably too big a job to ever fix, it's a bit like a fire underground that cannot be extinguished, all one can ever do is tinker with it and put out flare ups as they occur. It's evident that the company do not have sufficient resources to ever tackle the job so that these problems are eliminated, but color coding assets in CM might be a start.
If there were points to award for posts, I'd give you 1000 to start!
I've said before that instead of doing a *.*, why not lock what's only payware? (The *.* for those that don't know is the old CP/M, Unix/Linux, DOS, Windows command line reference to everything. You want to copy all contents from a folder (directory) to an other location you'd use copy *.*)
The answer I was given is the packaging system doesn't work that way and they want to make an all inclusive install with all assets and make it easier to download the payware all in one shot. If that's the case, then it breaks what's already installed, and my thinking much later, after that thread had long disappeared, that this is still a lazy man's easy way out.
Let's look at this in a bit more detail.
Many of the assets used are built-in or installed from the DLS so this is a wasted download that overwrites what's already installed, and locks down built-in and sometimes DLS assets that are already there by up-versioning them to use the packaged assets.
What's so difficult with having the installer check what's already there before installing? Content Manager does this now when installing something from the DLS.
If stuff isn' already installed and is required from the DLS, the installer should check dependencies just as Content Manager already does, and automatically download these assets from the DLS. We can't say that the speed will be any different because stuff has to be downloaded anyway. The content store, even though it's contacting the DLS, shouldn't be affected by a user's lack of FCT should they not have one.
Simple and done. It may require some extra If then, do while, and for to loops, and some fetching, but that's part of the download process anyway when we install something off the DLS.
The way they're doing it now makes N3V appear as though they are slowly removing the DLS from the picture and locking down content so it cannot be modified or updated locally. Maybe as much as they deny it, this is their intent, if not it sure appears that way. If we wanted locked payware, we would have gone to the other company where most everything is payware. As it stands now, when a packaged route is installed then removed, assets that were up-versioned, are now missing assets. This causes a multitude of problems requiring an EDR, and hunting missing dependencies on the DLS or elsewhere. If only the proprietary payware assets are locked, this is no longer an issue because when the payware removed, that is the only thing that is removed and nothing else. I have found a workaround for this issue, but I need to reaffirm my steps before I release my processes, and possibly send in a bug report on this matter.