Crash on startup for Linux - no checkForUpdateAction

• Jul 2, 2016 - 22:18
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Severity
S2 - Critical
Status
closed
Project
MuseScore

For some reason, there is code to initialize a variable called checkForUpdateAction that is enabled for Windows and Mac only, resulting in a crash on startup for Linux. I guess maybe it's disabled in Linux because "update" is a less well-defined concept? Anyhow, if we're not going to initialize this variable, we probably need to disable the code to actually add the variable as well.

Comments

• Jul 2, 2016 - 23:35

Comment: I may be misunderstanding the issue here, but in general I agree that anything resembling a buried automatic update function should not exist in a program. Once a program is released in a stable version, it should be ENTIRELY up to the user to decide when and if to update it, and that process should be ENTIRELY TRANSPARENT. IOW, upon installation the program should specifically and clearly offer the user the option of disabling any automatic updating. Sadly, this is not the case for most software (Adobe is the biggest sinner in the crowd, but Microsoft isn't far behind...).

MuseScore's core development team is better at respecting the rights of users than most of the big corporate software entities. There is a checkbox available in Edit>Preferences>Update which allows users to disable automatic updating by unchecking it. IMO, this checkbox should be UNchecked by default when the program is downloaded for installation. If a user WANTS the program to check for updates automatically, he should be offered an opportunity to enable that, but it should not be the default behaviour.

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• Jul 3, 2016 - 03:51

@Recorder85, to be clear: that setting checks for updates, and notifies the user if there is one. It is not an automatic update function.

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• Jul 3, 2016 - 18:34

@Zack: Okay, thanks. I wasn't sure about that, but this particular question has always seemed an important one to me so I thought I'd mention it.

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