Plugins conflict

gilles

I have found a conflict between ShapeBender and HolePunchTool.
When both are installed running ShapeBender make SU crash at the end of the process (hit Enter).

As we have a Plugin Index could we have a Plugin Conflict Index where we could find know issues between plugins?

I spend hours to find out witch one was incompatible.

Have a good day.

thomthom

These conflicts are rare and usually fixed quickly after they are discovered and reported to the authors.

TIG

@gilles said:

I have found a conflict between ShapeBender and HolePunchTool.
When both are installed running ShapeBender make SU crash at the end of the process (hit Enter).
As we have a Plugin Index could we have a Plugin Conflict Index where we could find know issues between plugins?
I spend hours to find out witch one was incompatible.
Have a good day.

This was reported some time ago and it was quickly corrected.
If you have the current versions of both of these tools then you should not get any clash errors... I rewrote the way the HolePunching tool added its observer because ShapeBender has an odd way of using 'make_unique' on it's copies, and that made things fall over - the HolePunching observers watch for changes to components that might affect it later - so to avoid any issues it now ensures that its observers are not duplicated [the cause of the crashing] by first removing them [if any] before adding one, so there is only ever one...
This issue was fixed with v1.7, within hours of the first report of the clash, that was almost six months ago.
Note that the HolePunching tool is now at v2.0 - see http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=302853#p302853 about the issue and then http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=271170#p271170 to get the latest version
It was also discussed here - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=318446#p318446 - about 3 months ago on the ShapeBender thread as Edson had missed the issue too [as a search for +HolePunch +ShapeBender will show...]

gilles

@ TIG
ShapeBender thread has 766 posts!
What I was thinking would be a thread where you could avoid reading congratulations, how to install the plugin, how to use it...etc,etc.
Just an index pointing problems and with a link if it is fixed.

TIG

But if you are in the ShapeBender thread itself and you search for 'clash' within it [i.e. use the top-left 'topic-search' option rather than the top-right 'global' open] you'll get just 4 hits - one covering the HolePunching issue and the others about problems with progressbar.rb missing or clashing with virtualwind etc...
OK you might also need to search for clash, conflict, crash etc to get all possibilities... BUT you can search a specific tool's thread to see if such errors have been reported before... probably easier than searching a list of all clashes ever reported that might not be kept up to date and leave you little advanced than you were before - if you're a volunteer you could do it

Dave R

I understand your request Gilles. And sometimes conflicts between plugins aren't reported in the same thread or even in the Plugins forum.

Fortunately most of the plugin authors update the date of the plugin in the thread title. I make it a habit to at least scan the titles of threads with new posts in the Plugins forum to see if there's a recent date. If you do that every couple of days or once a week, it's not a very onerous task.

TIG

Also... if you post a message in the tool's thread to say that a tool has started 'crashing', then someone might recall an earlier 'clash' - like happened here, and thereby save you wasting hours trying to track it down yourself...
If it's a brand new issue the tool's authors are usually very quick to respond, as I did at the start of the year when it became clear that ShapeBender and HolePunch were not playing nicely together... I fixed my tool as it was possible to change the way it did things and thereby avoid an issue with a weirdness in ShapeBender's methods [although that could probably have been changed too] and of course other tools might have also replicated a similar weirdness and a potential clash if I had not done so...
Clashes [or just simple weirdnesses in operation] are relatively rare but when they do come up they are almost always solvable - although I had issue recently with a webdialog for a custom exporter [commercial] that suddenly stopped working properly for some MAC users, when it had worked for all PC and MAC users for ages, and it took ages to resolve - finally TBD helped - it was the latest version of Safari on MAC that has become stricter on interpreting javascript and I was setting some 'innerHTML' code as an 'attribute' when it's actually a 'property' - earlier versions of Safari and current IE are forgiving and say 'I know what you really meant' and fixed it for me - BUT this new Safari, it says 'No!' Once it was spotted and I recoded it now works fine again on all OSs and all versions of their web-browsers...
Sometimes you can wonder how many bits of incorrect code there are out there, currently working OK for now but waiting for say a version change to screw them up - one example is the 'parenthesizing of arguments' in Ruby code. The API examples almost always use .method argument, anotherarg as their example BUT Ruby recommend that you use .method(argument, anotherarg) - because the other way might be 'deprecated' in future updates to Ruby itself rather than SUp... [i.e. it'll stop working!!] Most scripters now use the second way... BUT the unparenthesized way still works and it is still widespread... AND as it's shown in the API docs, it just confuses new authors too...

gilles

Thank you so much for your answers, I notice that Fredo have recently implemented something like an "Update Observer" don't know how this work but it would be a great thing if it could scan every plugin installed.

@unknownuser said:

if you're a volunteer you could do it

I was thinking of something like the big red button named Plugin Index