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New Gui to Install CHDK

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Offline Adromir

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New Gui to Install CHDK
« on: 18 / March / 2019, 03:04:45 »
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Well recently I got an Idea for a new Tool to make the Life with CHDK a lot easier. I want to create a new Gui that helps with the Installation of CHDK and shall be a replacement for all the Tools that are out there, which are all a bit Outdated (which is not a problem since they all still do their job), but missing a few features I personally like to have.. So I just want to get a little bit of Feedback, if the Idea of my Project is good and if there are still some things people would like to have..

So here is the List of features I thought of so far:

1. Preparing an SDCard and Downloading/Installing CHDK on it (including creating partitions and make the Card bootable)
2. Managing several Cameras
3. Managing different SD-Cards (keeping track of the Installed Version etc.)
4. A Script Manager (installing and Uninstalling scripts)
5. CHDK Settings Management (editing the Configuration on your Computer, Set global Settings for all of your Cameras for example)
6. Multilanguage support
7. Multiplattform support (Pretty sure I can do Windows and Linux, Mac i am not sure about, because i have no way of testing it)
8. Easy to expand and future Safe

If you have any Questions or Suggestion, please comment in this Thread. Maybe I'd ask for some basic help in the Later Development, so if you feel like you might help , I'd be glad for every helping Hand..

with best Regards
Adromir
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Offline reyalp

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Re: New Gui to Install CHDK
« Reply #1 on: 23 / March / 2019, 17:58:14 »
You may find the CHIMP development thread has some useful discussion of issues and approaches https://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=13091.0

Questions I would suggest thinking about
- What will your app do that Stick or Chimp don't?
- Is a new app the best way to address those issues? Or could it be done by contributing to them, or a complementary app?
- Do you expect to support it after development is done?

From the POV as of someone who supports CHDK, having yet another install method isn't necessarily a positive if it doesn't do something significantly better than other options.

FWIW, another approach I've though about is generating images that can be flashed with something like https://www.balena.io/etcher/ - This is super convenient for things like raspberry pi, live USB sticks and so on. From a development POV, this approach would allow you to completely ignore all the annoying platform specific drive access and permissions issues which plague the other apps.

One missing piece for this is expanding the partition(s) after writing the image. This has been requested as an etcher feature (https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/1451) so could be a valuable contribution there. It might also be possible to do in CHDK, though supporting it on all 150+ platforms would probably be  :o
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: New Gui to Install CHDK
« Reply #2 on: 23 / March / 2019, 19:13:20 »
Quote from: reyalp on 23 / March / 2019, 17:58:14
What will your app do that Stick or Chimp don't?
Items 2 to 5 on Adromir's list seem interesting and are not currently supported elsewhere.  Especially for those of us with more than one camera.
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Offline Adromir

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Re: New Gui to Install CHDK
« Reply #3 on: 25 / March / 2019, 21:23:29 »
Hey, thank you for your thoughts on the topic. Well my first outline for it just included managing several sdcards for my camera, especially keeping the configuration in sync between the sdcards. I know it can easily be done by establishing a Workflow on your computer, later I decided to add managing different cameras and the preparing sdcard features, as it would be convenient to have if you don't have to switch between different programs. And I have no clue why , but Sticks and chimps never did a reliable job for me..

If I want to support it after development is finished? Yes I do. I am still reading into some new fields of the system I'll be developing it with, because I try to figure out what the best way is to have it kind of future proof. Right now I am preferring a database driven system, where I can easily add new cameras. I am even thinking about expanding the program to make it a universal "Swiss army knife" for camera hacking and maybe even supporting different firmwaremods like magic lantern. I am not sure if I will really incoperate that, but I guess starting in a way that might enable me to do so doesn't make a difference in effort than having to rewrite stuff later in the progress.

Another "advantage" of my solution is, that it won't have any external dependencies (like a Java installation for example) at least none the user needs to take care of.

Some things that I still need to figure out are mostly how it will be the best practice is to realise some things, like if it is possible natively in the programming language I use or if it's better to invoke a command line/bash that does the trick for me..
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