[Plugin] SketchUcation Tools 2.6

Rich O Brien

What version are you using? V2.5.0 or v2.5.1

Edson

2.5.1

TIG

Wait for a stable version of 2.5.2 ?

djohnson.nz

Hi Guys,

Neither SketchUcation tools 2.5 or Extension warehouse seem to keep track of all the plugins I have loaded in Sketchup Pro. Is it intended that they only keep track of plugins each of them downloaded or are they supposed to look at the plugins folder and identify all the plugins then work the updates, would that even be possible. The transition to sketchup 2014 has been difficult with some of the old plugins not working anymore and copying the plugins folder from one version to the other is becoming more unreliable. Can you offer any advice as to a good way of dealing with this issue.

David.

Dan Rathbun

@djohnson.nz said:

... copying the plugins folder from one version to the other is becoming more unreliable.

First of all... here at SUC, we who give advice, have as far as I can remember back (which was my first version being SUv7 initial release,) always told users not to copy the old plugins folders over to new SU versions, wholesale.

We always encouraged users to check for updates to plugins.

If they could not find updates, to copy and test plugins one at a time.

Now.. however, we have SPIS and Trimble EW, which can make installing much easier.

So, second of all, the Trimble EW, keeps track of only the extensions IT installs. When it does, it writes an "extension_info.txt" file into the plugin's sub-directory. In this file are two GUIDs one to identify the extension, the other to identify the extension's version. These data correspond to the attributes of the same name in the Ruby SketchupExtension class.
When SketchUp loads, it checks the list of loaded extensions, against the EW database, and IF an update (to one of the EW installed extensions, is available, the EW toolbar icon will change. It will have an orange circle with black update arrows, superimposed upon the icon.

The SketchUcation Tools read through the "Plugins" dir(s), and enumerate all rb/rbs files.
It also enumerates all SketchupExtension class instances.
You CAN use the SUT to toggle both ON/OFF. (Even ones installed by the Trimble EW.)
I don't know, in the code, whether it treats EW installed extensions any different, or even looks for the "extension_info.txt" file. TIG can answer that.

To address the "difficult transition", I can only say that many developers had a lot of work to do, to update their extensions from an old obsolete Ruby trunk & version, to Ruby 2.0.0 (which skipped the entire 1.9 code trunk!) Ruby 2.0 was almost totally rewritten, and has many differences from 1.8 Ruby.
It is more stable, much faster, handles Unicode strings (1.8 on PC did not, making many non-English pathstrings to the User folders a no-go,) and many more enhancements.

Things ARE getting better and easy slowly.
The Trimble Warehouse now has an "Install All" feature, that can install all of your "plugin set" with a single button click. (Keep in mind that it still does not know any difference between your various computer or the OS installed upon them. It juist remembers YOU as a user when you log in.)

Bob James

EDIT:Rats! Guru Dan got in before I finished.

Advice from a definitely Non-Guru but battle-hardened source

@djohnson.nz said:

Hi Guys,
Is it intended that they only keep track of plugins each of them downloaded or are they supposed to look at the plugins folder and identify all the plugins then work the updates, would that even be possible.

SketchUp Plugin Store can only 'see' what it has loaded.

@djohnson.nz said:

The transition to sketchup 2014 has been difficult with some of the old plugins not working anymore and copying the plugins folder from one version to the other is becoming more unreliable. Can you offer any advice as to a good way of dealing with this issue.David.

Take heart! We are all "suffering" to one degree or another. If all of the plugins in existence had been converted to account for the new version of Ruby, then the answer would be easy (somewhat tongue in cheek): Start fresh and load all of your plugins with SketchUp Plugin Store.

The problem has many faces (here are five of them):

Most, but possibly not all, of the 'SketchUcation' plugins will eventually be updated, but have not yet gotten there.
Many of the 'old standby" plugins are not and may never be updated because they come from 'other' sources (SMustard, blogs, etc.)
Some of the converted plugins do not run in 'additional folders' (if you, like me, want a 'standard plugin folder available in a cloud' (e.g., Dropbox) so your home desktop, laptop and work desktop all have the same plugins available)
There are two 'legal' folders for plugins: one for plugins that will be used by multiple users of a computer, and the 'standard' folder C:/Users/Bob/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/. The new standard folder was created to eliminate the confusion stemming from not having permissions to access the plugins folder in the pre-2014 SU. (How's that working for you )
And, inevitably, some (hopefully small) subset of the converted plugins may not 'play nice' with each other.

Fortunately, at this point in time, most of the issues have been identified, but it has been a very bumpy road getting here.

Soooo: As I said at the beginning: Take heart! Start fresh and load all of your plugins with SketchUp Plugin Store. Unless there is no other apparent alternative, don't copy and paste from a previous SU version's plugin folder, but if you must then do it one at a time or you'll really find yourself in a mess.

Dan Rathbun

@tomot said:

@tig said:

With v2014 the newly located Plugins folder automatically has FULL permissions so at last this issue should be behind us

It seems to me there were more important items on various SU wish lists, over the years. I don't ever recall seeing move the Plugins folder, on such a list.

MS Windows Developer resources that I have seen have always told developers to store program data in the %AppData% paths. The old DOS FAT16/32 file system was tolerant of user data stored in the program paths, but when Windows went exclusively with the NT File System (Windows 2000/XP) security got tighter. NTFS had file and directory permissions like UNIX.

The fact that plugins were actually user files, but stored in the program path was the FIRST thing I started bitching about (the day after I installed v7.)

The problems with security permissions have gotten more acute with Windows version 6+.

IT was us developers that bitched and screamed and demanded that user files be moved to the user %AppData% or "Documents" path, AND it was also US that whined and whined for a Unicode friendly Ruby version. SketchUp was delivered up through version 7 on the PC, with the obsolete, initial release of Ruby v1.8.0. The first thing I did, after installing SketchUp 7.0M0 was replace the Ruby Interpreter DLL, with the latest v1.8.6 DLL from Ruby-Lang.org. Then I told the members of the SketchUp team, and everyone else in the world, that they could also.

So SketchUp v8 and 2013 PC came with Ruby v1.8.6-p287, because WE showed it could be done easily.

A lot of these developer discussions occurred in private developer forums, via private email, or in person to person conversations at BaseCamp. But a lot of the discussions are right here on SCF in the Developer forum. Look for the API topics, the RubyGems topics, the Unicode Strings topics.

Having the plugins where they should always have been, and having SketchUp distributed with Ruby 2.0 and the full standard library, and loading RubyGems... completes what must have been the top four items on the developer wishlists!

Your preaching that these things are somehow bad because you have to do some work in cleaning up your plugin code for Ruby 2.0.. it is upsetting me.

We have a saying in the US... it is called "talking out your rear end!"

.. and you are doing doing it.

Those of us who know.. those of us who asked and begged the SketchUp Team to make thees changes FOR YEARS.. know that you are playing the fool.

Talk about subjects that you know something about, and stop berating the Trimblers for giving us mostly what we asked for.

djohnson.nz

Thank you for your replies to my query, and this resource to make that possible.
Cheers, David.

kienhp

Not run in skechUp 2014, why?

TIG

Did you install SketchUp v2014 on the main system-drive [C: ] or is it on another drive-letter ?
Do you always get this error as SketchUp starts, or is it when you try to open a SKP by double-clicking its icon, AND that SKP is not on the same drive as SketchUp.exe itself ?
Or to put it another way... if you open SketchUp with a new empty SKP by double-clicking your Desktop shortcut to SketchUp.exe what happens ? Similar/Different/No errors ??

There is known bug in v2014 M0 where this configuration of file locations and usage can stop its Ruby2.0 loading properly, and then you can get errors as a partial Ruby can't parse some strings or find vital ruby methods...

Please post the results of the following in the Ruby Console for v2014...

` Sketchup.find_support_file('Plugins')

Sketchup.find_support_file('Tools')

Sketchup.find_support_file('SketchUp.exe')

$:

$".grep(/gems/)`

And also a file-path for one of the SKPs that is showing this issue...

I don't think it's directly related to our toolset per se, but rather your configuration...
But we need to get to the bottom of this...

Dan Rathbun

@kienhp said:

Not run in skechUp 2014, why?

Because Vietnamese encoding is not supported by Ruby yet.

Bug # 7742 : System encoding (Windows-1258) is not recognized by Ruby to convert back to UTF-8

One user changed his Regional and Langauge settings to US English to overcome this:
StackOverflow : Error installing Rubygems on ruby command prompt in Win7

pyroluna

I was wondering about the update system; it's not working as I would expect.

I have some plugins by Fredo installed; these come with its own update checker. However, I don't really like the way it pops up every so many days. It's a bit intrusive - especially if I have to teach. Pupils are easily spooked by an extra toolbar or window.

All that aside, however, I still leave it on, since it regularly shows updates that do not show in the SketchUcation Plugin store. I can see that my installed Fredo-plugins have different version numbers from the ones in the list, but still there is no update button, and it doesn't show up in the updates list.
So eventually I clicked on through until a button 'install extension' became visible. This is a bit counter-intuitive though.

Rich O Brien

Did you install them from the PluginStore initially?

We can only track your activity in the PluginStore since it's launch. Anything you do outside that environment is outta our control.

We could add the ability to track your every movement. #youarebeingwatched

mitcorb

Hi, pyroluna:
I don't know if this works, or if you really want to do this, but Fredo's Check for updates has an interval box ordinarily set at 15 days.
Window>Libfredo Settings>Check plugins for update: the interface appears, and at the bottom of the frame is the input box for the interval. Maybe set to zero, or 99?
I could not find in the information manual anything, nor any setting in Program file subfolders Plugins, but I have seen registry titles relating to this during routine security scans on my system.
I do not advocate messing in the registry, just to say.

Gábor

@pyroluna said:

I was wondering about the update system; it's not working as I would expect.

The update system in 2.5.1 compares your user's latest downloaded plugin version to the curent available version in the store. If there is any difference the plugin will show up in the update list.

So:

The plugin won't show up in the update list if you haven't downloaded the prevous version from the PluginStore.
The plugin won't show up in the update list if you have updated it on an other device. (As in this case the latest download by you is up-to date)

We will refine this in the next (2.6) version by adding your device ID to the comparasion.

Rich O Brien

Updated to 2.6.0

4x times faster downloads

New Bundles features in My SetUp

Tons of tweaks and bugfixes

Anyone on 2.5 has until the end of the week to upgrade before we shut it down.

cotty

Love the new bundle feature!

mitcorb

I have downloaded for SU2014. This would also be appropriate for SU8, correct?

Rich O Brien

@Tim

Yes, v8, v2013 and v2014

Install in all versions to get the full benefit of the bundles going forward

function

not sure if this has been brought up -
is there a way to have it so that when you disable an extension - it will also disable the plugin? Sometimes they names are different and its difficult to find an extension and its corresponding plugin... or anyway it can be frustrating.