I think others will love the idea of having a installer - like ArduinoIDE.exe that will install the software on the computer. Also, everytime the IDE it would check for updates in the background. Anyone agree?

Uhhh...I'm a sponge wanting more knowledge and more knowledge and MORE KNOWLEDGE!

I think others will love the idea of having a installer - like ArduinoIDE.exe that will install the software on the computer. Also, everytime the IDE it would check for updates in the background. Anyone agree?

Would be useful if it could actually be done. Keep in mind that the Arduino IDE is avalible for 3 different PC platforms, that would require a lot of extra work and testing with each new IDE release. And part of installation requires that a actual physical board gets attached to a PC at sometime and to know what kind of board is being attached. As far as I know there is no way for the software to know what type of board is trying to attach to a USB connection for the first time, so I don't think the Installer can be 100% automated and thus will always be subject to user error on first installation?

I prefer to maintain control over what is installed in my environment. I _really dislike_ automatic updaters. I don't even like the IDE phoning home to check for updates.

There have been enough backwards incompatibilities introduced in the release series that this would have been disastrous for my projects, at least.

I would strongly prefer that automatic updates and an installer _not_ happen.

One man's opinion.

-br

Yeah, I dislike automatic updates also (in fact, I forced them off in my installer, and it is the first thing I do after installing anything). And of course the files should be always be available without installer, a plain zip.

But I am talking about the main stream of people, they register an account here and the first post they make is to complain because something an automated setup would avoided. With some guy here we spammed the forum a lot like 2 months ago and almost every post ended by "download this...", usually they don't even reply to the post after the problem disappeared, but in conclusion I felt (maybe was an illusion) than our forum went a little more cleaner just because usually legacy users are the ones answering these repetitive questions over and over again.

Eried, I have great respect for your work. I believe the problem you are pointing out is a real one, but I have a different view of the solution.

You know those signs at amusement park rides that say "you must be at least this tall…"? Someone who can't get through the IDE install is just going to hit the next brick wall at a higher rate of speed if you grease the first speedbump for them. If you've been reading around the forum lately, you'll know just what I mean.

My point being, you can't save the clueless from their cluelessness, and it's a social deadweight loss to inconvenience the competent in the attempt.

I know billroy, it is often weird to thing that someone who can't install the ide will be able to program it, I didn't started to keep my mod updated for them, it is for other windows users, living with a slightly inferior version, an ugly icon, bt dongle delaying 30 secs every operation, small things like that.

Maybe some focus group or something is missing to check in the real world if people who can't set properly the environment from a zip are really able to use the arduino or no properly, at the end of the day the forum stays less filled with these kind of problems and some more interesting issues start to appear.

I think others will love the idea of having a installer - like ArduinoIDE.exe that will install the software on the computer. Also, everytime the IDE it would check for updates in the background. Anyone agree?

Funny that those "hard use operating systems" like Linux already have this.....

But the way of doing it on Linux is that that OS has a tool to do it in a common waythat is outside the application vs having to put this type code into each and every single Application.

My concern is that trying to add something like this to the IDE to solve the issues/limitations in Windowsbreaks it for those running more advanced operating systems.

Maybe for the Windows versions, the Arduino guys could put the IDE into the new Microsoft Win8 APP store.Surely that interface provides for install/update capability?