Server frontend / watchdog

Just starting using the launcher and really liked it, thanks for the tool!

Only small objection I have is that creates yet another directory.,“logs”, in server directory while there is already “log” directory which can be used for the purpose.

If you are accepting wishlist for future releases basic configuration overview/editing capabilities of output channels like old Frontend has would be a nice addition.

What do you mean by that?
What would differ from the “channels” tab in the config editor?

Sorry if I missed something, built the tool myself from this repo:

End the user interface is like this:

Do not see configuration editor integrated here.

That’s NRK’s launcher.
Take a better look at the first post in this thread.

Ah, my bad, NRK discussion pointed me here. Now I see the difference:

Some fixes and additions :

  • Fixed for real this time the TextBoxes for the paths, now the changes are saved.
  • Added a button to rebuild the scanner’s database. It stops the scanner, removes both _media and pouch__all_dbs__ folders and starts it again.
  • Also added two items in the tray context menu (rebuild media db and open diag window):
    tray_context
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I uploaded the project to GitHub with some changes after a big cleanup.
The code is still somewhat messy but I’m open to suggestions. This is still a beta.

Changes

Added to the new version:

  • Dynamic handling and editing of executables. Now they can be added or removed.
  • Added options to each executable:
    • Name for the tab
    • Autostart at launch
    • Autostart delay
    • Enable or disable console commands
    • Startup commands
    • Delay for each startup command
  • Added a “new file” button for creating new config files.
  • Edit an existing file pressing the Shift key while clicking the “edit file” button.

You can download the first release here:
CasparLauncher - v1.0-beta

Some features I still want to implement are console command history and older configuration versions (still figuring out how to deduce the version).

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Checking out casparcg.exe file information I can see there’s version metadata. For that you can use FileVersionInfo.FileVersion.

There is also a version AMCP command, see the wiki for details.

Great! I see that’s not a problem.
The actual issue would be guessing the actual config file version. One could assume that from the casparcg.exe version but, if you open another file from any other location and it’s based on older or newer versions, the editor woudn’t know which options to expose.
What I had in mind is to show the correct options according to the file version and warn about differences between config and server versions. And eventually convert what’s backward compatible to make that work.

Also, it would be nice to make an assistant-like configuration creator.

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Then the approach I proposed is way more preferable as it doesn’t require to run Server to know the version of the executable.

But from there I’ll try to keep working on what I proposed some time ago, which might be really helpful in providing validation for the different versions of Server.

Hey! Thanks for this launcher, I use it all the time in production and on my dev machine.

Just a quick opinion: having to hold shift to remove an executable was not intuitive.
I’m ashamed to say I had to clone the repo and check the code to find this modifier key.

That’s it. Thank you again.

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Thank you for the comment!
I know it’s hidden but I didn’t find a better way of exposing that without a ‘remove’ button laying around that you could accidentally press. Also I hate prompts.
Do you have any suggestion on how to solve that?

Permanent button with confirmation prompt should be the way, no?

New release! Many fixes and some nice UI changes. Some more to come.

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nice work.
thanks

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This just keeps getting better.
Thank you for your work!

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Hey @rrebuffo, nice work. This release is quite nice and I’m already using it into production. Nice work.

One thing I noticed though is regarding the config file, which seems to be updated when the launcher exits cleanly instead of whenever changes are made. On my first test I made some configurations and then I cold rebooted my machine. When the program launched again, it didn’t save any setting prior to rebooting.

My workaround was to make my settings and then exit the launcher using the tray icon. Then launching again.

If this can be improved it would make the launcher quite resilient against unexpected reboots like power outages.

Thank you for your work, it’s fantastic so far.