• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

P3D v4 What should do an installer with add-on.xml if I want a userfriendly installation

tsgucci

tsgucci

Messages
482
Country
hungary
Hello Guys!

I need some advice because I'm lost.
First I wanted to update the installer to be able to install our scenery for Prepar3D v5 but I thought if I now change my installer to add-on.xml type installation because its fun! Ooh, how wrong I was there.

First I tried to simply copy every file to the default location with a pre-written add-on.xml. It is simple and straightforward. But then my beta testers reported that it would be nice to install the scenery into different location too.
My installer have a small configuration program which I can reprogram to generate add-on.xml with hard links pointing to the exact location.

I have also tried the method to run the prepar3d.exe with commandline configuration.
Interestingly if prepar finds an add-on.xml in the default Documents folder than it ads to add-ons.cfg in "AppData", but if I use the commandline configuration the add-ons.cfg in "ProgramData" is updated. Now, is this a bug or a feature? :D

I want to give the possibility to the users to install anywhere where they want.

How would you do this? What is the common and proper solution?
Or maybe I just overcomplicate things.

Thanks.
 
The reason for AppData versus ProgramData is that AppData is at the user level and ProgramData is at the system level. Files that are sitting in the user's Documents folder are not available to other users.
 
Thanks for the reply. That means I should use the commandline configuration method because it makes the scenery for all users available? Or what is the practice?
 
You are assuming there are multiple users for a computer... for most of us, that is unlikely to be true. I know that with the add-on.xml method, the user can disable an addon from within the sim. I do not know if the same can be done with an addon that was added via the command line.
 
I've tested it and add-ons added via command line can be also disabled. Do you know how other major developers are doing this?
 
I prefer the add-on.xml method... it ensures that even if you uninstall your Prepar3D sim... the next time you install the sim and fire it it up... it will want to enable your addon.
 
That's a very fair point! Good argument.
Thanks a lot for all your reply. You helped a lot!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top