Make MonoDevelop's Welcome Page notify the user of new and updated addins

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The Mono IDE MonoDevelop has a "Welcome Page" that presents users with a
selection of useful links and shortcuts when they open MonoDevelop. It 
would be useful to display a list of new addins and updated versions of 
installed addins, because this information is currently only available if 
the user actually seeks it out.

Deliverables: a patch for MonoDevelop that an item to the welcome page: a 
lits of updated version of installed addins (if available), and a list of 
new addins. It should also provide buttons/links to launch the addin 
mananger so that the addins can be updated or installed.

Timescale: 5 days

NOTE that Mono.Addins has all the information already; it's simply a 
matter of querying for the information and displaying it.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by m.j.hutc...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2008 at 7:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

i claim this task

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2008 at 8:08

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Original comment by m.j.hutc...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2008 at 8:27

• Changed state: Claimed
• Added labels: ClaimedBy-grizlo42

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I have gotten most of the code done, i had to totally rework how i did it a few
times.  All I need to do is get the repositories that it should use, which will 
take
a little long.  Can i have a few more days?

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 30 Jan 2008 at 2:57

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sure, as long as you want, but I suggest giving me time to review it before 
Google's
deadline :)

Original comment by m.j.hutc...@gmail.com on 30 Jan 2008 at 6:23

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Ok, I am having some troubles, i got the code to compile, but no updates come 
up.  I
think it is because it isn't finding the repositories.  Can you take a look at 
my
code?  I put a test in there, where no matter what the addin is called, it will 
make
a button "hi" for every new addin.  The addin manager says there are 3 updates 
in the
go-mono.com rep. that i haven't gotten, so there should be 3 items.  Thanks.

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 31 Jan 2008 at 1:50

Attachments:

• WelcomePageWithAddins.tar.gz

[GoogleCodeExporter]

You shouldn't have to do this much work -- the addin manager already knows 
about all
of the registered repositories, and MonoDevelop has one initialised already at
MonoDevelop.Core.Runtime.AddinSetupService. You can see the way that the IDe 
uses it
in main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Ide/MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui/AddinUpdateHandler.cs

Also, take a look at the way that the addin manager's GUI does it:
http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/viewcvs/trunk/mono-addins/Mono.Addins.Gui/Mono.A
ddins.Gui/AddinManagerDialog.cs?view=markup

BTW, I suggest moving the WelcomePageItem subclasses into separate files in a
WelcomePageItems directory.

Original comment by m.j.hutc...@gmail.com on 31 Jan 2008 at 2:51

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ok, that is where i ended up getting the code, from
http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/viewcvs/trunk/mono-addins/Mono.Addins.Gui/Mono.A
ddins.Gui/AddinInstallDialog.cs?rev=93193&view=log
but, it uses a treeview, so i tried to remove that from the code, and combine 
it.  I
must have missed something though.

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 31 Jan 2008 at 10:57

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heres what i got, a lot is fixing module version so that it is dynamic, not 
hardcoded
it adds needed items, but will not install. i will add to other task too

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2008 at 7:15

Attachments:

• WelcomePage.tar.gz

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here it is, even though its a little late.

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 6 Feb 2008 at 6:21

Attachments:

• WelcomePage.tar.gz

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here is the newest version just to clear anything up:

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 12 Feb 2008 at 4:14

Attachments:

• WelcomePage.tar.gz

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This is much improved over the last iteration! 

Comments:

* There are some places that spaces have been used for indenting which makes the
formatting look odd with an 8-space-wide tabs setting. I suggest trusting the
auto-indenter -- hit tab to re-indent a line :-)
* Expandstate an be kept within the modstate file -- just add an expanded="true"
attributes
* There's no need to have startingXml hardcode, as it can be generated from 
xmlMain.
this'll make it easier to maintain if more sections are added.
* WelcomePageFallbackWidget.cs:123 threw a nullref exception on startup, until I
deleted my old state files. It might be worth catching invalid input there.
* The preferences button should probably be at the top-right of the screen so 
that it
doesn't take up vertical space
* the buttons on the preferences UI don't stay selected, so one can't hit 
up/down
repeatedly for the same item

There are a couple of major problems with using the tileview that have been 
making me
think that it was a very bad idea on my part... the way it renders over the 
themed
background, disables the vertical scrollbar, and gives adjacent widgets the same
height allowance. Maybe some (3?) VBoxes within an HBox would be better, and 
allow
the user to pick the columns manually. The big problem with this approach would 
be
the UI -- the best would be drag-n-drop within the welcome page itself.

A possible approach would be to implement the HBox/VBox scheme but without a UI 
-- so
that it only load setting from the xml files. We could polish this up and 
commit it,
then look at how to implement D'n'D later. 

NB. I had to revert WelcomePageView.cs and WelcomePage.addin.xml to incorporate
changes from trunk.

Original comment by m.j.hutc...@gmail.com on 3 Mar 2008 at 5:04

Attachments:

• WelcomePage.diff

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I like the idea of using H/Vboxes, except what to do it someone wants to add 
more
content....

I wasn´t able to get the button to align left, but i will try again.
Drag-n-Drop would be awesome, but i haven´t a clue where to start, i could 
look into
it, but probably best answer is to wait until the web browser is finished and
implement it there.

Original comment by grizl...@gmail.com on 4 Mar 2008 at 3:42