AIOI problem when installed on a drive other than C:\

[james2vegas]

During the AIOI, PovRay is installed and a post-install patch gets applied to povray.ini and pvengine.ini to add the LGEO bits, but to find those files, only the C: drive is searched, even if Povray is installed on another drive (R: in this case).

[Willy Tschager]

The AIOI searches only in the program folder for the POVRay folder by default. An extensive search throughout the entire hard disc has been proven to be too time consuming and people where annoyed by it and thought the installer had stalled for some case.

I'll see if I can add a checkbox allowing to do an extensive search at users command.

w.

[Max Martin Richter]

Why not introduce a dialogue, where the user must point out the right folder?!

/Max

[Roland Melkert]

@willy

You could do a search in the start menu folder (on disk) a link to the povray exe should be in there somewhere, if so it will take you to the location by reading it's contents.

Just be sure to search both the general and current users start menu folder tree.

[Stephen]

There shouldn't be a need to search at all.

The current location of the installed POV-Ray can be found via the registry:
HKCU\Software\POV-Ray\CurrentVersion\Windows\Home

(It's been a while since I installed POV-Ray, so the location may be slightly different if installed for All Users etc.)

[Willy Tschager]

Many thx for this valuable information. I'll see how to code this up (if only I weren't such a lousy programmer ;-)

w.

[Stephen]

One thing:

You'll need to check if that key is written during installation of POV-Ray or during 1st run. If it's the latter then that key may not be of use if you're trying to determine where the current AIOI installation of POV-Ray actually placed the folder. I'd test it myself but I don't have a clean system without POV-Ray to try it on at the moment.

[Willy Tschager]

I did some investigation on this:

The POV installer writes an installation-path based on the version in say:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\POV-Ray\v3.6\Windows

After you've launched POV for the first time a second key with path information gets created:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\POV-Ray\CurrentVersion\Windows

Now I haven't tested if the latter changes every time based on the version of the pvengine.exe you launch. I'll modify the AIOI in order to look first for the path in CurrentVersion (looking for an already installed POV) and if no key is found I'm going to assume that you've installed 3.6 included in the AIOI. If none of these keys is found you'll have to write the LGEO paths yourself.

Remarks?

w.

[Stephen]

I think if the installer can't detect where POV-Ray has been installed, via registry keys or any other means, then it could pop up a dialog page advising the user and requesting that he select the POV-Ray folder manually (via a Browse button and a call to BrowseForFolder) so that the POV-Ray paths can still be auto-modified - rather than forcing him to manually edit the .ini file later. Just a thought...

[Willy Tschager]

I think if the installer can't detect where POV-Ray has been installed, via registry keys or any other means, then it could pop up a dialog page advising the user and requesting that he select the POV-Ray folder manually (via a Browse button and a call to BrowseForFolder) so that the POV-Ray paths can still be auto-modified - rather than forcing him to manually edit the .ini file later. Just a thought...

This has now been added to the AIOI. (In order to test the browse dialog you'll have to "hide" the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\POV-Ray key in the registry by renaming it to something else in case POV-Ray is installed). I also prepared the installer for the upcoming library update with some clean-ups in the licenses. I also added LDfind to the AIOI. Check it out at:

http://www.holly-wood.it/tmp/LDraw_AIOI_...bit_v1.zip

and let me know if everything works as expected.

Bye, w.