SDK Manager - Initial Setup

Jacquers said:

It would be more user friendly if I could configure the preferences during the initial setup. E.g. SDK Manager Updates, SDK Updates, Device Updates and Download Location.

Hmm could've sworn that it already works this way - i.e. you are asked whether you want automatic updates or not for each of those things, during the initial setup.

Is this truly a fresh install, or have you installed the SDK manager on the same computer / user account before?

I wonder if they changed something. If so, maybe it's intentional that they want auto updates to be enabled by default.

I've had it installed before, maybe that's why.

Also wouldn't mind a portable install, without anything in appdata\roaming

What do you mean portable? I installed it once on each computer I ever used it. What would you want to be different from now?

Jacquers said:

I've had it before, maybe that's why.

Yeah prob if you delete the sdk manager config (ConnectIQ/sdkmanager-config.ini or something like that) you'd get fresh install behaviour.

Jacquers said:

Also wouldn't mind a portable install, without anything in appdata\roaming

Yeah, but there's SDKs, device files, ERA folder and simulator temp directory.

Technically all those things could be covered by relocating 2 root folders (ConnectIQ\ and the Garmin temp folder), but the question is whether Garmin is willing to do that or someone is able to hack the ecosystem to make it work.

EDIT: I guess the 3rd thing to relocate would be the SDK manager itself.

Portable as in just being able to copy the folder to another pc. I have my hdd split into 2 partitions on one pc, but not on the other. So it can make things tricky if I want to download once and just copy the folder to another pc.

flocsy🤠 said:

What do you mean portable? I installed it once on each computer I ever used it. What would you want to be different from now?

For a portable app, everything related to the app is installed in a single location so:

- it can be easily deleted without leaving a trace

- it can be easily moved or copied to another folder / user account / device (i.e. it's portable, as in you can easily move it elsewhere)

- potentially, 2 or more instances can be installed on the same computer / user account (great for testing)

- potentially you could easily run the app from a USB stick (while keeping all of its preferences and data on the stick) (again it's portable in the same sense as above)

Never heard of portable installers for browsers? They were somewhat popular in the old days when multiple versions of popular browsers were supported by websites at the same time, rather than the current situation where you're SOL if you don't update to the latest browser version.

Note that for Windows, one aspect of portability (which isn't always fulfilled) is that nothing is added to the registry.

https://portableapps.com/ 

I can already think of one use case which would make some devs happy:

- the ability to have multiple installations of the entire CIQ ecosystem, so you can keep old device files around forever (not claiming that Garmin wants us to be able to do this, but def some devs would love it)

I may have read about these "apps" that people take with them in a (maybe even bootable) USB stick. Never tried them though. Yeah, I agree it sounds like a logical thing, especially that it probably would make things easier even for Garmin, when all the documentation [sic] for different platforms would became essentially only differ where is the default installation directory.

I tried on Windows Sandbox to check the default behaviour, but I'm getting other dll issues. Looks like I need some c++ redist, which I installed, but it didn't help. Not a big deal atm, I'll manually move stuff now, but maybe the process can be improved if the default options aren't shown during the setup.

it's prob less of a thing for Mac since, unlike Windows, Mac apps don't have a fixed installation location for the binaries and static app data. So if everything for your app is already in the .app package (which is really just a folder), you can already install 2 instances of the same app side by side simply by renaming one of the .app packages, and copying them both to the Applications folder.

Ofc this approach doesn't really solve the problem that there's still just one fixed Application Support folder for a given app (and one temp folder, if applicable), no matter how many instances you install. Not only is the app's user data stored in a different place than the app itself, but there's only one instance of the user data per user account.

So the concept of a portable app still makes sense on Mac.