Types of installations
There are two types of installations in Update Watcher:
- Auto-discovered installations
- Manually added installations
They are discovered via Windows registry and are considered volatile.
This is because they are constantly being discovered and their list may change without warning. It's a 100% automatic thing, and the list is computed (not stored/loaded) when needed = no place to save params safely
Thus it's not possible to change API parameters for them - so all auto-discovered installations are grayed out in Configuration.
If you (for some strong reason) still need to change settings for an auto-discovered installation, then you have to override it. To do so:
- either use context menu (since v. 2.0.2)
- or just add custom installation with the same path (like here).
👉 If any user-added installation will have the same path as an auto-discovered one, user-added settings will be preferred, and auto-discovered - ignored.
Since they are non-volatile (persistent), it is possible to set API parameters for them.
You can use them either to override auto-discovered installations, or to check for updates for installations that are not auto-discovered (like unzipped ones).
They can be added by the corresponding buttons in Configuration:
There are two types of manually-added installations:
- JAVA_HOME environment variable - single instance only. Environment variable value is queried at the time of app launch.
- Custom directory (path) entry
The latter can be used, for instance, to track releases extracted from ZIP files; or to override auto-discovered installations.
⚠ Please keep in mind that you have to update path manually if it changes.
⚠ Please keep in mind that if JAVA_HOME installation significantly changes (i.e., 8 → 11, or JRE → JDK), you should update API parameters manually (because the app cannot decide whether this is intended or not).
You can use Detect (reset) API settings for selected button to do it.
- Since v. 2.0.2, just use context menu for this:
It will create user override for an auto-discovered instance, and then disable check for updates for this override.
Before 2.0.2, you have to do this... _(click to expand)_
To disable updates check for one of auto-discovered installations:
-
Add custom entry with path that corresponds to one of auto-discovered instances you want to disable. Note that auto-discovered instance is now disabled (no checkmark). It is overridden by user-added custom entry.
-
Un-check the custom entry. Now both (auto-discovered and user added) installations will be omitted during update check.
