I got some error messages the last few days when using GSX Pro in MSFS where it gave me a chance to look at some log file but also asked me to run FSDT Live Update. Then I was offered to either restart or quit Couatl. Didn't take a note of the exact error but I was surprised. Since I already knew I had the same version installed which was said to be the latest.
That panic message will always tell you to run the updater, it doesn't do any version checking.
I find this confusing, when you're told you're on the latest version even when you apparently aren't.
Remember when people were shouting and asking to put the mythical version number, "because everybody else does it", and I tried to explain that, a version number without checking every file, one by one, would just give you a false sense of security instead ?
People were "confused" by the previous absence of a version number, but after we added it, nobody ever said it was confused anymore, until now.
Of course, I knew that adding a version number wouldn't make the update process the slightest bit more reliable because:
- telling you a version number won't prevent or fix files eventually gone missing or corrupted locally after an update.
- telling you a version number won't protect you from issue caused by connection problems, like firewall blocking some downloaded files, antivirus blocking others, or your local cloudflare node not getting the latest version of the file the last time you ran the update.
In fact, telling you a version number, might simply mislead you think all our files are ok, when they are not, so you won't be tempted to run the Updater, even if you might need to, but you don't know, because you think you have the "latest version", just because the updater told you so.
I noticed how it upgraded lots of stuff.
"lots of stuff" doesn't mean much. As explained so many times here, and also in the first post of this this very thread, SOME "stuff" will be always downloaded:
- The jetway replacement files.
- The airport services files.
- The custom GSX profiles for FSDT sceneries you have installed.
If you had OTHER "stuff" being downloaded instead, it means you really needed an update.
And, as also explained in the first post of this thread, if you run the update again, and you see the "other stuff" is NOT being downloaded again, you CAN now be sure you REALLY have the latest version of every file.
After this, I once again ran FSDT Installer to check the version information and whether it changed now after these updates. Still the very same version though, both for what I have installed and what is the latest.
Of course the version number might have not changed, and that's precisely what I tried to explain so many times, yet people kept saying I was wrong, and now you see the proof I wasn't:
A version check made "like the others do", using a few crucial files that holds a version information ( in this case, the version of the packages in the manifest.json file ), can be very quick and give you the version immediately, but it cannot be reliable, unless each and every file in the package is checked against the online version, which is EXACTLY what the "Update" button did before, and still does now, the code hasn't changed a bit, just the button will show "Check" instead of "Update", which previously seemed to have confused lots of people assuming the Update sign was a notification, when in fact it was ( and still is ) a full integrity check of each file.
Why the version number hasn't changed in your case ? If you really followed all the explanation so far, it should be clear:
The last time you ran the Updater, you got the latest version of the manifest.json files but for some reason ( firewall, antivirus, cloudflare caching ), you didn't get the latest version of some "other stuff" ( assuming the "stuff" you saw redownloaded is not anything belonging to the 3 categories of "always downloaded" files ), so when you ran the update again, since IT IS a full integrity check and is NOT relying on the version number, precisely because it cannot be trusted, the update realized some files were left out from the last update, so it download them again, as it should do.
