Hi everyone,
Many of you have been asking me via Facebook when we'll release a new Zet Universe Insider Preview build, and I know that you're anxious for an update. Our team is working hard to get a fresh build out, and we're treating it with high priority. We are pushing hard to get a build out this week, but I thought that since the time between the builds is longer than we expected I would share a few more details with you about what's been going on here behind the scenes.
Many of you have been asking me via Facebook when we'll release a new Zet Universe Insider Preview build, and I know that you're anxious for an update. Our team is working hard to get a fresh build out, and we're treating it with high priority. We are pushing hard to get a build out this week, but I thought that since the time between the builds is longer than we expected I would share a few more details with you about what's been going on here behind the scenes.
As we mentioned this in our blog post about the Product Roadmap, our main goal for the September is to provide you with the first bits of the SDK tools so that you could start building your own plugins to extend Zet Universe. That's why although we are pushing hard to get a build out this week, it's very important for us to provide you with a build that would be stabilized enough, as the platform is currently experiencing the major refactoring in preparation of the SDK.
In general, refactoring is rarely applied to a good product; however, although we've planned to introduce a well-thought plugin subsystem into the product since the last December, we needed to better understand the needs to this system, and this led us to creation of the temporary plugin infrastructure. In fact, we've created two different plugin infrastructures in Zet Universe: one for connecting it to external data sources (we call them "Apps"), and another one for small plugins that directly participate in the data extraction/analysis/clustering process (we call them "Processors").
Now that we've shipped a handful of builds to you, and with them added our second "App" - Local Folders, as well as a few more "Information Processors" (shown below), we formed a deeper understanding of our requirements to the unified plugin infrastructure for Zet Universe.
In general, refactoring is rarely applied to a good product; however, although we've planned to introduce a well-thought plugin subsystem into the product since the last December, we needed to better understand the needs to this system, and this led us to creation of the temporary plugin infrastructure. In fact, we've created two different plugin infrastructures in Zet Universe: one for connecting it to external data sources (we call them "Apps"), and another one for small plugins that directly participate in the data extraction/analysis/clustering process (we call them "Processors").
Now that we've shipped a handful of builds to you, and with them added our second "App" - Local Folders, as well as a few more "Information Processors" (shown below), we formed a deeper understanding of our requirements to the unified plugin infrastructure for Zet Universe.
The upcoming Zet Universe SDK is a .NET Class Library that works on desktop platforms, including Windows 7, Windows 8.x, and Windows 10. Since the last build our team was working very hard on ironing out the main element of this .NET Class Library, "ZU.Core.Developer.dll", by removing implementations of the rest of the code still left after initial introduction of the existing plugin infrastructures.
So far, we've moved implementation of system's and apps' configuration, item thumbnail cache (which for some reason resided in the SDK library), authentication stuff, various observable collections, and removed a bunch of legacy code that is no longer used by the platform.
In this process we've also found a few bugs, including a critical one that would lead to Zet Universe missing changes happening to files living in the user's profile folder, and we are busily working on updating the plugin, to bring you this necessary fix. This is a blocking issue for us, as well, and we'll have to fix it before we'll be able to push a new build to you.
The good news is that we believe we know how to fix this blocking issue, and we almost finished moving the implementations from the SDK Class Library to the platform, and we're looking forward to ship a new build later this week.
Thanks for your patience, we're doing our best to make sure the wait for a new build is as short as possible.
Thanks,
Daniel and the team
So far, we've moved implementation of system's and apps' configuration, item thumbnail cache (which for some reason resided in the SDK library), authentication stuff, various observable collections, and removed a bunch of legacy code that is no longer used by the platform.
In this process we've also found a few bugs, including a critical one that would lead to Zet Universe missing changes happening to files living in the user's profile folder, and we are busily working on updating the plugin, to bring you this necessary fix. This is a blocking issue for us, as well, and we'll have to fix it before we'll be able to push a new build to you.
The good news is that we believe we know how to fix this blocking issue, and we almost finished moving the implementations from the SDK Class Library to the platform, and we're looking forward to ship a new build later this week.
Thanks for your patience, we're doing our best to make sure the wait for a new build is as short as possible.
Thanks,
Daniel and the team
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