PimpBot 4

[Yathosho]

as i won't be able to work on pimpbot 4.4.4 for the rest of the month, here's a release candidate. it's the most thoroughly tested version of pimpbot to date, which explains the long list of changes. if you experience any problems, please leave a message and i will look into them in late august/early september!

[Yathosho]

the latest rc allow the creation of an installer entirely from commandline. while this might not be applicable for most people, it allows using pimpbot with an alternative interface. anyhow, the feature is there and i've attached a list of available commands.

example:

code:
pimpbot.exe @script=avs @title="My AVS Installer" @presets="c:\path\to\my\presets" @multilingual=1 @convolution=1 @eeltrans=1

have fun

[Yathosho]

a new release candidate is available now, mainly bringing updates to the backup and runtime components, as well as improving the installer

[Yathosho]

forgot to post the link for 4.4.4rc3

[Yathosho]

the fourth final release candidate improves the installer when using windows 7.

give it a try!

[Yathosho]

a lot of work has been put into 4.4.4, considering it's only a minor update (one might argue this should've been version 4.5!) no previous version of pimpbot has been tested this thoroughly and i came across quite some bugs. the full changelog is really long, but i want to highlight some of the changes since 4.4.3:

-much faster rebuilding of installers and improved first time building
-compiler no longer requires admin privileges to build installers
-improved debugging options, added more developer options
-added more translations
-pimpbot setup was reduced in filesize
-many, many bugfixes

i would've loved to offer a unicode version of pimpbot, but at least three of the plugins it's using are only available as ansi version. unicode would've allowed the inclusion of some of the translations i received that i cannot convert to ansi. i was also hoping to fix a bug that was produced by one of the plugins, but i could only reduce its appearance. if pimpbot crashes during compilation, it will work most of the times on a second attempt. this problem appeared since the earliest pimpbot 4 version but it happens so rarely that i haven't noticed it in a long time. it also just happens on windows 7 (and vista i guess).

enough talking. if you're using a recent version of pimpbot 4, you will be reminded to upgrade from within the program. otherwise you can download pimpbot 4.4.4 manually below.

http://pimpbot.whyeye.org/

[Yathosho]

as of this version, pimpbot is avaiable in two versions: ansi and unicode. the later allows the inclusion of a wider range of language, though for now only bulgarian has been added to the unicode build. for now, the ansi build will stay the default version, but on longterm this will be the unicode build.

another change in this version is the replacement of some internal functions, which should lead to greater stability when building, and a new and improved installer. as functionality stays the same, the change of the version number is minor.

download pimpbot

ps: if you go for the unicode build, you might want to remove the ansi build though they co-exist peacefully

[Yathosho]

bugfixes, new translations, updated components

download or update within pimpbot. users of the 4.4.4.2 unicode build have to update manually.

[Yathosho]

pimpbot will turn 9 years old this year, even pimpbot 3 was first released 6 years ago. there are hardly any more avs releases this day, but still i felt motivated to improve the tool over the years and if it was only for my own needs.

today version 4.4.4.4 is out! i'm sure it won't be the last version, but i don't plan to play around with it for some time and focus on new tasks. i think it's also time to recommend changing to the unicode built, even if that means slightly bigger installer sizes (36864 bytes for a "standard" installer). the new version brings more languages, upgraded components and some minor bugfixes. there are a few known bugs, but i doubt anyone will ever run into them.

since the introduction of pimpbot 4, there have been some new features that are worthwhile updating your old installers.

-less virus reports, even if these were false positives (this is worth the update alone!)
-installers only require admin rights when necessary
-more reliable winamp detection, including alternative plugin folders
-improved ape handling

if you kept your old pimp files, an update takes two clicks. right-click on the pimpbot file, choose "rebuild installer" (or "edit" to apply changes). if you, like me, have many installers, you can compile one of pimpbot's helpers: the multitool. you will find this in your the "tools" folder of your pimpbot location and you can compile it by right-clicking and choosing "compile nsis script". more conveniently, you can compile it through pimpot's installer or the entry in your context menu. as the name suggests, multitool allows you to load many pimpbot and to recompile them at one click. if you care about your users, you gotta update!

i know there are many people that don't even keep their pimp files. in that case there's another helper: resourcegrab. you compile it as described above and then drop any of your old installers onto it. this will extract the splash screen, (and if you provide ResHacker.exe in the same dir), the icons and checkboxes. this should make it more pleasant to rebuild your old installers and keeping your old graphics.

that's all i can think of right now. thanks to everyone who helped translating pimpbot or who helped finding bugs and improving the software!

download pimpbot

ps: when updating pimpbot, you better check the "download content" box in the component selection!

[Yathosho]

Originally Posted by Yathosho

ps: when updating pimpbot, you better check the "download content" box in the component selection!

a day after posting this, i edited the installer so it's just a regular installation now

[Yathosho]

just came across this on wikipedia:

NSIS was created to distribute Winamp. It is based on a previous Nullsoft product, PiMP (plugin Mini Packager), and is also known as SuperPiMP.

i used pimp for my first installer, hence i went for the name "pimpbot", but i dont think i was aware of the meaning of "pimp."

[Yathosho]

also, dropbox detection is working again with the latest dropbox beta!