360Works plugins and FileMaker 12's new Install Plug-In File script step

[Matt Klein]

We are having some issues with the 360Works plugins that we use when using FileMaker 12's new Install Plug-In File script step to update an existing plugin.

 

Essentially,  it won't replace the existing plugin if one exists.   If no plugin exists,  it has no problem installing and loading it.   If another version of the plugin exists,  it returns a 1550 error code indicating that the plugin couldn't be loaded.   If you go to the Extensions directory,  you'll see the version that was there originally and then you'll see copy of the plug-in with .new as the extension.

 

So,  it seems like we can't update your plugins(at least FTPeek and a ScriptMaster created plug-in) with FileMaker 12's new Install Plug-In File script step.

 

Are you working on a fix for this?  If so,  do you have an ETA?     I hate asking that question, but we have a lot of clients we are installing now with our product running in FileMaker 12 and each client has a lot of workstations and all clients are remote,  so to have to replace a plug-in by hand on each workstation at each client is a problem.

 

 

[Joe Pampalon]

Hi Matt,

 

We are working on a solution to his problem, but I don't have an ETA unfortunately. The best fix we have so far is to remove all old copies of 360 Works plugins from the user's machine, install the new plugin using the Install Plug-In File script step, then restarting FileMaker. That seems to fix the issue for all future versions of our plugins.

 

There is an automated method of removing all 360 Works plugins from the User Extensions directory that we provide. It is a Java applet that runs from the browser. After it loads in the page, a button will appear that will begin the process. After the removal completes, it should list all plugins that were deleted. However, you should be aware that this does not check the "Program FilesFileMakerExtensions" on Windows or the "Applications/FileMaker/Extensions" on Mac.

[David Wikström]

+1 to stress how important fixing this is. This really is a BIG pain in particular when using 360Works plugins with runtimes/distributed solutions.