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[Files] How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 4:02 am
by buladaddy
Hello.

I love CN. ^^

I don't know exactly how to upgrade CN.
Please let me know.

I use portable version of CN.

My questions are as belows.
For example) 1.4 to 1.4.1 upgrade.
CN folder => D:\Cintanotes
CN Database file => D:\MYCNDB\mycinta.db
CN config file => D:\Cintanotes\cintanotes.settings
I think this config file seems to be created when CN is launched at the first time. right?

So, I do upgrade CN like this.
1. backup the config file on temp folder.
2. Overwrite(Extract) the new version 1.4.1 into the original folder (D:\Cintanotes)
3. restore the my original config file(backup).
that's all.
===============================================================
In this case,
How will the new parameters of the new version be done?
My original config file (to be restored) don't have the new parameters.

At the first time of the new version CN launch, are the new parameters inserted into my original config file automatically?
If so, the method of my upgrade is ok.
but, if not, how to do?

Best regrads.

Re: How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:09 am
by ale
Hello buladaddy,
yes, cintanotes.settings is created when CintaNotes is launched for the first time. Now the question about upgrading...
1. Backup your CintaNotes settings and database to a safe, backup folder. This is not strictly needed but we want to be safe. With backup I mean make a copy, so we leave the files in the original location, but we also have a copy in a safe place.
2. Make sure CintaNotes is *not* running, so if it's running exit it.
3. Download and unzip the new portable CintaNotes version to a temporary folder.
4. Replace, that is, copy from the temporary folder and overwrite the existing files/folders in the actual location you're using:
4.a cintanotes.exe
4.b The lang folder and its content
4.c The help folder and its content (not strictly needed in practice)
4.d The readme.txt file (non strictly needed in practice)
5. Done. Now the next time you start CintaNotes, on this first run of the new cintanotes.exe version, the existing cintanotes.settings file will be reused and the new parameters will be inserted automatically in it.

Re: [Files] How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:59 am
by ukt
Sirs, Unless, I've not been diligent regards searching harder or longer, I have failed to locate required upgrade steps in a logical place on your site.
The info supplied in this thread is *very* relevant for those wanting to upgrade portable CN, yes?
Why not have in your Help page http://cintanotes.com/cintanotes.htm ?
Why not also include info for upgrade full CN too.
The word "upgrade" occurs zero times in this document...

There is an Installation section. There appears to be no Upgrade section.

fwiw, I like CN for many reasons and is pity that this type of relevant info is not readily available. Not actually see why users must [in the end] search forum or indeed use google to search site for keywords...

Note that there must be many same or more relevant texts scattered around the forum that ordinary users such as myself would dearly love to see in *one* place, yes?

Nice product - has been interesting to see CN continue to mature and 'acquire' more useful functionality! [and long may it continue :]

Regards to development team.

btw, just why is it reqd for user to do any copying/safe storing/any file movements, whether for portable or installer versions?
I mention as surely is a trivial task, in the scheme of things, to have an intelligent installer to handle exactly the steps detailed above [for portable|full install] and do so in a secure manner so that copies not 'accidentally' overlayed/lost.
I'd assume the criteria regards settings and db files are the same whatever the version being deployed is, yes?

Re: [Files] How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:38 am
by CintaNotes Developer
Hello and thanks for your comment!

Upgrade instructions are located in the readme.txt file which comes with every edition of CintaNotes.
But you are right that is should be more readily available. I'll add it to the help file and also will
provide a link to the upgrade instructions with each release notes.

As for the file copying/moving - for the installed version all you have to do is to run the installer and point it to your existing CN folder (which should be also detected by default).
For the portable version, manual file copying is unavoidable because it has no installer.

Thanks again!

Re: [Files] How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:32 am
by ale
There are some reasons why the instructions in this topic are a bit verbose and suggest some extra copying and backup of files. I'll briefly tell about them for the sake of completeness.

The portable version of CintaNotes, as any other portable application, asks us to be a bit careful, everything lives in one folder, so if we accidentally delete that single folder, we delete all our notes and also the backup of the notes.

The original poster came to the forum asking for help, so I thought he needed a bit of detail in the various steps, and he also had non standard, i.e. personalized, locations for the various files.

The specific CintaNotes version he asked help for, had a peculiar folder structure into the ZIP file, so simply saying unzip everything and run the application could be a bit confusing when we looked at how the files, in this peculiar case, were laid out on the disk.

That said I also think instructions in help file can be expanded a bit, with a section about each one of: installing, upgrading, backing up, uninstalling. And I'm sure it will come in future releases :)

Re: [Files] How to upgrade ? (Portable Version of CN)

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:53 am
by CintaNotes Developer
ale, thanks for the comments!

Yes I agree that the help file should be revised. But also we need to make the update procedure as easy as possible, our goal should be to render the upgrade help unused ;)
So here are a couple of topics of interest:

1) Maybe it would be better to ship the portable version in the folder without version info? E.g. now it is "CintaNotes_1_4_2" but would be just "CintaNotes" (of course the zip file name will continue to have the version info). This way the file can just be unzipped over the old version and that would be it.

2) I don't think that the backup step is really necessary if you already have backup enabled, since backup cannot be overwritten by installer and it is not present in the portable version either. But I agree that it never hurts to backup your personal data. Probably the user experience here can be enhanced in future when we come to implementing the auto-update feature. It would be possible then to create an extra backup automatically.

3) Actually there already exists a section in the help file devoted to backup ;)