Highlights
- Updating from inside your DAW works on Windows. The installer used to be tied to the program that started it, so the moment you closed your DAW to let the update through, the installer went down with it and the update never landed. It runs on its own now and finishes.
- It asks before closing anything. Replacing the plugin means whatever has it loaded has to close first, and that used to happen without warning. Now you are told what needs to close, so you can save your work first.
- If anything does go wrong, the update screen has a Show installer button, and the file it downloaded is kept where you can find it and run it yourself.
- One catch, and it only bites once: if you are on 1.5.6 or older, this fix is not in the copy you are running yet, so install this one by hand rather than from inside your DAW. Every update after it is fine.
- Nothing changes on macOS, where the installer was never tied to the host in the first place.
- Laura FX gets the same fix, same day.
Details
This one came from a fellow plugin developer who did nothing wrong and still ended up stuck. He had installed the plugin without the standalone app, saw the update banner in his DAW, and clicked it. The download and the checks all worked. Then the installer needed his DAW gone before it could replace a file the DAW had open, and closing the DAW took the installer down with it. Every attempt ended in the same place.
The mistake was mine and it was architectural. The installer was being started from inside the DAW, which makes it a child of the DAW on Windows, and some hosts are set up so that everything they started dies when they do. That is sensible behaviour for a host, and it is a terrible thing to hang an installer off, because the whole point of this installer is to outlive the program that asked for it. It now starts independently, so closing your DAW cannot reach it.
While I was in there I turned off something I should never have shipped: the installer had permission to close your DAW without asking. It was quick and quiet and it would have thrown away an unsaved project the first time someone hit it at the wrong moment. It asks now.
If you own Laura this is a free update, as every update is. Your patches, packs and license are untouched.