In my daily work I’m working with multiple versions of Workbench. I usually install and update every major release on my PC under “Program Files/FME yyyy”, where YYYY is the release year. Occasionally I install multiple major release versions if the need arrives, using the path “Program Files/FME YYYY.X.Y”.
As opening workspaces with the wrong version of FME is problematic for several reasons, I’ve created and been using a small console application to read the top 20 lines of the selected FMW file, extracting the path to the version of FME that created the workspace, and firing up the correct Workbench if possible. However, even if this minimizes the problem of using wrong versions of Workbench quite a bit, this still has a drawback. I can only see what FME version a workspace needs by opening it either in Workbench or a text editor.
But now I’ve utilized Claude AI to build me a small C++ extension to Windows Explorer that displays the folder name (of fme.exe in the embedded path, i.e. the version) and the build number of any FMW file. It does slow Explorer down a bit, but it’s worth it when trying to get a grasp of all the versions. And all it required was a small DLL that needs to be registered as admin.
How are all you other authors dealing with similar circumstances ?
Has anyone created similar automations to alleviate your daily troubles ?
