Just today FME 2015.1.3.1 build 15573 has been available. Users who have registered in the download page received a notification mail, but others may not know yet. Since the update could contain some important hot-fixes, I think it should be informed to every user.
How about checking for updates automatically whenever the user opened Workbench and other components of FME Desktop?
- check for updates automatically when opened by default,
- show a message box to prompt update if a newer version has been available,
- the user can stop/start the automatic checking optionally. e.g. check a checkbox in the message box to stop; stop/start by a setting in the About dialog or FME Options.
- manual checking can also be used (current menu: Help > Check for Updates).
It may also be good if the user could choose the frequency of the automatic checking for updates. Once per Day, Once per Week, None, and so on.
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I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree @takashi, at least with it being enabled by default.
Reasons:
- In a corporate environment, it's not often the end user who does the upgrade. They have to get ICT to do it, and sometimes, there's a "responsible party" who decides when it's time to upgrade. And doing the upgrade often has lots of protocols behind it (the software needs to be tested; do you want it "scripted" for auto install?... etc etc).
- Most service packs aren't relevant to most users. 2015.1.3 for instance, is mostly only useful for those using VPF Writers. 2015.1.2 has a more varied set of fixes, but I don't think the vast majority of users would benefit from them. For larger releases (i.e. 2015.1), I can see the potential benefit
- Corporate users are almost all conservative in their software use and don't want to upgrade regularly. If it works, just keep using it. New versions introduce new bugs. Etc etc. In my last two establishments I've still only been inclined towards getting one or maybe (*maybe*) two different versions of FME installed a year; and that's as the company FME go-to-guy; the regular users often go years between installing new versions.
Hi @jonathan_hrw, thanks for your comment.
FME is a software that is upgraded frequently, and there are cases that the upgrade contains important hot-fixes. Ideally once released version should not contain bugs, but sometimes FME contains critical bugs unfortunately. When such bugs were found, Safe updates the version one or more times. For instance, as far as I remember, FME 2015.1 has been updated 3 times, 2015.1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3, and those all contained hot-fixes. This time, 2015.1.3.1 is also a hot-fix.
Nevertheless, there are users who don't know that the bugs have been fixed. I think that this situation has to be improved.
The point is that the upgrade should be surely informed every user. I think the automatic checking is a most quick way, but it would also be good if there is another way. Just informing is necessary, means does not matter. Of course, it should be decided by the user whether upgrade actually or not.
Anyway, I hope that Safe's test will be done more thoroughly before releasing a new version...
Hi @takashi,
Thanks for your reply. You raise some good points, but I think you're only skirting the issues; most of the changes in the smaller service packs won't affect most users looking at the update records.
http://downloads.safe.com/fme/2015/whatsnew_2015-1...
http://downloads.safe.com/fme/2015/whatsnew_2015-1...
etc. They only have a few very specific fixes. If you need those fixes, then yes, they'd be useful, but the vast majority of FME users won't as they're so specific. I don't think we need anything from later than 2015.1.
> "The point is that the upgrade should be surely informed every user"
I believe this is where we disagree. You and I are both well informed, experienced FME users who push the software to its limits and often beyond. But many (most?) users (at least in the organisations I'm familiar with) only use it as a "convert format A to B" sort of thing. Within a corporate environment, most of those users won't knowingly ever hit the few bugs that are fixed. Furthermore, they won't be able to do anything about it if they do all get notification of a new update; corporate IT does it, and a "process owner" is the one who decides whether to upgrade.
Even better example - The corporate PC I'm sitting on right now has:
Chrome 24 on (dated 2013!)
Firefox 32 - even older
Yet despite these old versions being significant sercurity threats, they're still running the old browsers. Yet both of these can include automatic updates, don't even need to bother the user, it just happens magically. They just haven't been updated because the users don't care, and if they did, corporate IT still don't care.
My last place was similar, that's just how the corporate world works I'm afraid.
This is why I think it should be off by default; and the ability to control it via a scripted install for corporate environs.
In fact, there are more things that aren't mentioned in the "What's New list".
There was an issue that FME Store objects cannot be downloaded in 2015.1.3.0. It has been fixed in 2015.1.3.1, but is not listed in the list. In 2014, I reported tens issues to Safe support and many of them have been resolved till now, but some of them have not been listed. I don't remember whether the critical issue about Dynamic Schema in 2015.1.0.0 had been listed in the list when it was fixed in 1.0.x.
I also think every critical issue should be listed in the list or another list e.g. "What's Fixed list".
>> "The point is that the upgrade should be surely informed every user"
> I believe this is where we disagree.
Yes, I also think so. Furthermore, I think that informing updates is a duty of the vendor.
And maybe I had to clearly say that my intention is to inform minor upgrades to users. I don't think it's necessary to automatically check for major upgrades - e.g. from 2015 to 2016. I assume that an update cycle of FME will complete in a year. Current menu command "Check for Updates" also only checks minor upgrades in the same major version.
I'm afraid that you perhaps misunderstood this point.
It might be better that the user could set the default behavior of automatic checking during installation of FME.
+19- Safer
Very good discussion and good points here. We were discussing this further this week. I think we can find a path forward that will make everyone happy. I think we do have a duty to inform users of new versions, but we have a find a way to make this not annoying and also a way that it is shut off for those in the corporate environments where upgrades aren't an option.
I also think we need to do much better so we don't have to hotfix. That is one of my personal goals for 2016. We did fix each problem *twice* this year -- we learned from the issues that came up, and then 1: fixed whatever the problem was, and 2: put in place new processes to avoid that scenario in future. That said, FME has so many facets to it that we are always improving, so there will always be updates. And it is also a challenge to know what fixes are worthy of broadcasting and what fixes affect a very very tiny percentage of users that we could just contact directly to avoid *noise* for the majority of the base. So some tough tradeoffs.
Good discussion, good ideas, and we'll see what we can do.
Thanks for your serious consideration. I understand that there are different opinions depending on different situations and it cannot be decided easily, but therefore believe that exchanging views is important. It's great that we all can know various views through this Ideas site.
I agree, there are a lot of potential problems with automatic upgrades. In particular, where an organization can find themselves with users on differing versions of FME while sharing .fmw files. I won't even mention the potential for issues if you try to publish something on FME Server from a slightly newer version of FME Desktop.
Fully agree. Any automatic update function should be opt-in by default, followed by a huge warning if you turn it on. I've lost count of all the errors I've seen that have been introduced by mixing versions of FME Desktop and Server, causing lots of grief and lost time.
Hi @david_r, I'm never talking about automatic upgrades. My suggestion was to just automate checking for updates (same as current menu command "Help > Check for Updates") as a means to inform updates to users. Actual update (or not) should be decided by the user absolutely.
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