Updates, logs and support
Updating
Section titled “Updating”After the first install, the app installs its own updates. Once per launch
it asks the website whether a newer release exists. When one does, the notice
can do the update: it fetches the installer for the way this copy was
installed — the .deb, the .rpm, the Windows Setup or the .dmg — checks
it against the checksum the release publishes, hands it to Setup, Finder or
your package manager, and closes so that can happen. On Windows, Setup offers
to reopen the app when it has finished; on macOS and Linux you start it again
yourself.
Nothing is installed behind your back. You get the ordinary installer window and can still say no to it. A download that does not match its checksum is thrown away. Where the app cannot tell how it arrived, it opens the download page instead, exactly as before.
It will not close over unsaved work: a file that changed on disk while you were editing it stops the update and says which one.
Nothing is code-signed yet, so the installer will ask on Windows and macOS the same way it did the first time. Installing says what each platform asks, and what to do about the one refusal that is not a click away.
The session log
Section titled “The session log”Ripple Effect keeps a diary of each run, and it stays on your machine. There is no uploader, no switch to turn one on, and no endpoint to point one at. When you want to report a bug, you decide what to hand over.
It tidies up after itself. A session where nothing went wrong is deleted the next time you start the app, so the folder holds the runs worth something and not a file for every time you opened a project. If the app falls over before it can write its own verdict, the next launch reads that file properly rather than guessing.
Private things are taken out before anything is written down. Your username and home folder, the location of the project you have open, e-mail addresses, network addresses and anything shaped like a password or a key are replaced. Times are recorded in UTC rather than your local clock. No list of rules can know that a board’s name is private, so a glance before you post is still worth it.
The logs live in the app’s own support directory — the platform’s application data folder — and the support window opens it for you, naming which file is the session you just had.
Reporting a bug
Section titled “Reporting a bug”The support button in the app bar opens the support window. Reporting a bug
fills the form in for you: the version, your operating system, and which
installer this copy came from arrive already answered, along with the
technical details, so a report starts from what you actually saw rather than
from four questions. It opens the right form in the public support
repository, ripple_effect_support,
which is also where questions and feature requests go.
Three buttons under Support: copy the package details, copy the device details, and open the logs folder.
Messages
Section titled “Messages”The Messages tab is a different thing from the log, and the two are kept apart on purpose. Messages is what the app says to you about your folder: a translation that has fallen behind, a picture a passage points at that is not there, a board with no way in, a file written by a newer version. It is scoped to the open project and cleared when another one opens. The log is what the app says about itself, for whoever reads a bug report.
Files from a newer version
Section titled “Files from a newer version”A project file written by a newer Ripple Effect is never half-read. An older copy of the app says it cannot read the file, tells you to update, and writes nothing to it — a strip across the top of the project says what could not be read, and Messages keeps the note with the file’s path. This holds for the index, the project’s settings, a component, a board and a saved game. Things that only cache something — a bundle’s translation timestamps, the list of recent projects — rebuild by looking at the folder again, so those are never a reason to stop.