Breaking changes in latest builds of NH Prof

[Ayende Rahien]

Hi,
Builds 525 of NH Prof and up contains the following breaking changes:

The executable filename was changed to NHProf.exe
The appender filename was changed to HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.dll
The profiler namespace was changed to HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernate

Those are fairly minor changes, and they are necessary in order to support multiple OR/M backend.
I apologize for the inconvenience.

[Nicholas Piasecki]

I would have been totally fine with making these minor changes on my
own time except that NHProf forced me to upgrade this morning.
Changing project references, namespace imports, installer references
for debug builds--this was all tangential to my immediate debugging
task.

You should remove the forced update feature, or it should at least be
based on build date (six months to a year would be reasonable), not
build number. If you go out of business, I would like my copy to
continue working. I don't care if you get old bug reports--that's not
my problem, that's your problem, and it's one of the consequences of
selling a commercial software product.

NHProf is a great product and I appreciate your expertise, commitment,
and support, but the forced update has got to go. Pester me, but don't
prevent the app from running. Thanks.

V/R,
Nicholas Piasecki

[Pumb@]

I think I agree with you Nicholas, perhaps upgrading should be
optional.

Either way, due to problems with last version I've blocked NHProf in
my firewall and now it works properly :-)

Greetings.

[Eduardo Scoz]

+1 for not forcing updates automatically. 

I wouldn't mind having a popup telling me that a new version is available, though.

[Anne Epstein]

+1 ... this goes two ways though, I'd think don't force the upgrade, but if you're a user that's many versions behind, I don't know that you can/should expect the same level of service regarding problems. 

Perhaps there needs to be a message somewhere like the following, perhaps even in the alert that the user is behind too many versions:

 "You may continue to use older versions as long as you like-however, please be aware product support is primarily targeted for users that are within the most recent 25 builds.  However, if you are using an older version because there is a technical problem with upgrading to a newer version, please contact NHProf support so they can help you resolve your problem." 

[Chris Stavropoulos]

+1

Don't get me wrong here, I love the tool and I love the near immediate
responses to bugs that I see run through this list.

However, isn't standard practice when dealing with a piece of software
to ensure you have the latest version before going to support anyway?
If you are in fact out of date, the support policy can be as simple as
starting out with making sure you have the latest version of the
application before receiving any serious level of support.

Ayende, you focus your development efforts on creating software that
is open, extendable and pluggable to allow developers to work as they
choose. Then at the same time you're trying to force people to adhere
to your way of doing things, specifically with your release schedule.
The frequency of your releases, although generally welcome, make it
very difficult to keep things up to date. In all honesty, NHProf has
been working fine for me for the last 20+ builds. Why should I have to
keep updating it? If I don't want/need the new features and I'm not
experiencing any breaking bugs, shouldn't it be my own prerogative to
continue using the older version until such a time that I've
determined I need to upgrade it?

A new version notification is incredibly useful. Forcing me to upgrade
to it however is ridiculous. Forcing me to upgrade to a new version
that breaks my current application forcing me to debug a tool that was
working fine 5 minutes previous is ridiculous. Expecting me to block
the application at my firewall to work around this 'issue' is once
again, ridiculous.

- Chris

[Ayende Rahien]

@all,
I hear you load & clear.
The reason that I made the update notification mandatory is that I _still_ routinely get crash reports from people running build 359(!)

I changed the wording when you are running a build that is 25 builds old to mention that there is no support, but I'll allow it to continue.
Build 541 and forward will contain this change.

I am sorry for any frustration that this caused.

[Eduardo Scoz]

Great Ayende, very much appreciated!