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Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 1:16 pm
by henryb
I am installing SDRuno 1.3 to a new computer and would like to retain the settings from the 1.22 version on the older machine. Is this possible and if so, how can this be done?

Thanks and cheers, Henry

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 12:29 pm
by cmh31909
From what I have been told, they did not want to take the time to write a migration program that would read the registry settings of your existing installation and write out an ini file to be used by the new 1.3 version, so we are basically screwed on that. There is no way to migrate settings, not a very good user experience in my opinion.

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:14 pm
by Tech_Support
cmh31909,
I don't know where you heard this, but you were not told this by us. You were clearly told that the .INI file has device dependent settings which is incompatible with the format used in the old registry based system (which was device independent). Up until release 1.3, it was always necessary to overwrite the registry if any SDRuno settings changed, so this is certainly NOT a new issue. In future, you will NOT lose your settings as the .INI file can be backed up or will not need to change at all.

Sincerely

Tech_Support

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:58 pm
by cmh31909
Yes, you are correct, I was not told that you did not want to take the time to write a migrator. My sentence was structured poorly. I was told that there would be no migrator. I still stand behing my comment about not wanting to take the time to do it. I write software for a living, so I know the issues involved. While I will concede there are probably settings in there that are device dependent, the majority of them should not be. The code to read/decode the registry settings already exists in the existing products. The developers know what settings correspond to what entries in the new ini files. It is just a matter of reading the registry and translating those settings and writing out the ini. It is not that it can't be done but rather someone does not want to spend the time to do it. Some of the settings that I would expect would not be device dependent would be things such as window positions/sizes, cat control, omni-rig configuration, waterfall parameters/colors, etc.

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:37 pm
by Tech_Support
Hello cmh31909
Ultimately, I guess almost anything ought to be possible with enough effort. I am not a software developer so I am not well positioned to judge how problematic this might be. I would ask you to consider a couple of things though:

Firstly, SDRuno is not part of a commercial or product offering. It is freeware that we have developed for owners of both RSPs and other third party hardware as a service to this community. Users have the choice to use other software such as HDSDR or SDR Console (for example) if they prefer and we actively try to ensure that our products are well supported on these other free software platforms.

Secondly, as a very small company with limited resource, we have to make a judgment as to where to focus our resources to provide good solutions to meet the needs of as many of our customers as possible. Sometimes we will get this judgement call right and other times we may not. SDRuno is by no means the only software that we have to develop and our customer base currently uses anyone of five different hardware products that we sell using a range of different operating systems going back to Windows XP. I cannot judge how difficult developing such a migration program may be, but I can say that testing such a program for all of the different hardware on all versions of Windows back to XP for all possible settings is a certainly a non-trivial task. Also such a program will have no on-going benefit as the registry is no longer used by SDRuno from release 1.3 onwards. Moving away from the Windows registry was a key step for us towards re-developing SDRuno as a cross-platform solution

It is worth bearing in mind that anyone who used earlier versions of SDRuno have not lost their registry settings. They will still be there. So if this is indeed a trivial task as you believe, there is nothing to prevent anyone from developing such a migration program and hosting on GITHUB as a service to the community. I am sure that there will be other people as well as yourself who would find such as program useful.

Sincerely

Tech_Support

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 5:07 pm
by cmh31909
>So if this is indeed a trivial task as you believe, there is nothing to prevent anyone from developing such a migration

Just to clarify, I never said it would be trivial, just reasonably doable.

In order for someone to do this, your developers would have to provide a mapping between registry keys and entries in the ini file so that the proper translation could be made.

On your other points, I understand and agree. Also, in my opinion, SdrUno is by far the best application of all of the one's you listed, at least for the way I use it. I took a look at the other ones and yours came out on top by a wide margin.

Despite my complaining about the migration, you all have a fantastic piece of software hands-down.
It is very apparent that a lot of thought and design goes into it, kudos to the designers and developers!

Re: Moving SDRuno settings to a new computer

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:53 am
by henryb
Thank you both for that information. Reentering the settings is not a big deal for me. Moving the memory files is pretty easy too. I am looking forward to doing some scanning with the new version. Lots of interesting things to learn. Love that the new SDRuno runs on my ancient SDRplay 1.
Henry