7. Upgrading and downloading packages

This chapter describes all aspects of upgrading to a newer version of ECB.

The first section describes how to download and install a new package from the web, where "package" means either ECB itself or the required libraries semantic, eieio and speedbar.

After installing a new ECB-version ECB checks if the values of the customized ECB-options are still compatible. If not ECB does some smart things. This is the topic of the second section.

7.1 Downloading new versions of ECB and/or required packages

ECB offers the possibility to upgrade to newer versions direct from the ECB-website. This can be done if the following requirements are satisfied:

1. A connection to the web is available
2. The tools "wget", "tar" and "gzip" are installed

   With Unix-systems these tools are in the standard-distribution. If you are running any Microsoft Windows system then you need cygwin(25) which offers these tools too. On every system these tools must reside in the PATH environment-variable!

   If you are behind a firewall and you have to use a proxy you maybe need the following wget-configuration in your file `~/.wgetrc':

   # Define your proxies (where 8080 and 8081 are examples # for the port-numbers) http_proxy = http://your.proxy.com:8080 ftp_proxy = http://your.ftpproxy.com:8081 # If you do not want to use proxy at all, set this to off. use_proxy = on

If these requirements are satisfied you can download and install both ECB itself and also the required versions of semantic, eieio and speedbar:

• Download a new ECB-version with ecb-download-ecb:

  A description for this command you will find in 4.14 Interactive ECB commands. Check also the options of the customize-group 'ecb-download' (see section 5.3.12 Group ecb-download).

• Download and install of required packages:

  ECB checks at load-time if the packages semantic, eieio and speedbar are at least installed and at start-time if the required versions of semantic, eieio and speedbar (see `README') are installed and loaded into Emacs. If not you will be asked if you want auto. download and install them. If you confirm this then ECB does the following:

  1. Checking which versions are available at the download-site of the required packages. With the option ecb-download-package-version-type you can specify which type of versions (only stable, stable and betas or stable, betas and alphas) you allow to download and install. This option offers also the choice of asking you for a certain version. Depending of this setting ECB either ask you which version it should download and install or chooses autom. the newest version available which is matching both its min-max-requirements and the setting in ecb-download-package-version-type.

     NOTE: Currently there are only beta-versions of speedbar available therefore this option has to be set to 1 (allow stable and beta versions). But the speedbar beta-versions are very stable!

  2. Downloading and installing the right version (see 1.) of the required packages. ECB downloads and installs the new package versions in subdirectories of ecb-download-install-parent-dir.

  If both of these actions succeed then you will get a message-buffer which tells you something like:

  ----------------------------------------------------------------- Current state of the required packages semantic, eieio, speedbar: - semantic author-version must be [1.4, 1.4.9]: Installed in /usr/local/lib/site-lisp/semantic-1.4 - eieio author-version must be [0.17, 0.17.9]: Correct version already loaded! - speedbar author-version must be [0.14beta1, 0.15.9]: Correct version already loaded! After adding the new directory to your load-path and then restarting Emacs the new package(s) can be activated. -----------------------------------------------------------------

  Remark 1: "P author-version must be [x y]" means, that ECB requires package P in a version-number >= x and <= y.

  Remark 2: By setting the option ecb-version-check to nil you can prevent ECB from checking correct versions of semantic, eieio and speedbar but it's strongly recommended not to do this!

7.2 Automatic upgrading of options

7.2.1 User interface for option-upgrading

There are two interactive commands (see section 4.14 Interactive ECB commands):

• ecb-upgrade-options: Does all necessary beginning with a incompatibility-check for all options, upgrading/resetting incompatible options and ending with the display of all upgraded or reset options.

• ecb-display-upgraded-options: Displays an information-buffer which options have been upgraded or reset. Offers two buttons where the user can decide if the upgraded options should also being saved by ECB for future settings or if the buffer should be killed.

If the option ecb-auto-compatibility-check has a non-nil value (which is the default) then ECB does all this stuff automatically at startup. This is very recommended!

If you are interested in some background information, read 7.2.2 Background information!

7.2.2 Background information

Big packages like ECB will be enhanced and developed continuously so sometimes a new version must be released. Such packages offer in general a lot of customizable options so probably some of these options change the type or are renamed because the old type and/or name of the option makes no sense in the new release.

Especially options which have changed the type of their value are now a problem for the user which want to upgrade to the latest ECB-version: If the user has saved a certain value for option X in its file `.emacs' but the type of this saved value doesn't match the new defined type in the defcustom-form after an ECB-upgrade then there can occur serious problems like ECB can not be started anymore or even Emacs can not be started without errors.

Until now there was only one way to fix these problems: The user must manually edit his file `.emacs' and remove all entries for options which have now another type. After this and after restarting Emacs the new default-values of the type-changed options in the new ECB-release are active and the user can go on using Emacs and ECB. But this approach to fix the incompatible-option-problem has two serious drawbacks:

1. The user must manually edit the customize-section in his file `.emacs'. This should normally not be done and if then only by old-handed Emacs-users.

2. The customized value of the option X in the old-release (with the old type) is lost because after removing the related entry from the file `.emacs' the new default-value is active, so the user must re-customize the option X.

OK, this is one half of the option-upgrade-problem but a new ECB-release can also rename a option from name X to name Y because the new name Y makes much more sense and/or is more mnemonic. If only the name has changed but not the type this is not a serious problem like above but also annoying because the customized value of the old-option X takes no effect in the new release but instead the default-value of the new-option Y is now active. But nevertheless this problem has the drawback number 2 (see above).

The last category of upgrade-problems is a renamed option which has also changed its type.

ECB has a solution for all these problems:

• It checks all customized values of all ECB-options if they are still type-compatible. If not then it tries to upgrade the old-value to the new value-type and if this is not possible then it resets the option to the new default value and offers then to store it via customize in the .emacs-file (or in any file which is used for customized options). But ECB does not touch any customization-file without asking the user!

• It offers a special constant ecb-upgradable-option-alist which allows the ECB-maintainers to define special transformings for renamed options so even the value of an old-option X can be savely transformed to the new-option Y and the old setting is not lost.

All these checks and transformings are done at beginning of activating ECB - if the option ecb-auto-compatibility-check is not nil. If ECB has recognized incompatible or renamed options it does its upgrading/reseting-job so all ECB-options have correct types so ECB can start correct. After ECB is started it displays a list of all upgraded or reseted option with their old and new values.

This document was generated by XEmacs shared group account on December, 19 2009 using texi2html 1.65.