License key test installs

[CodingJungle]

can you make it where addresses that resolve to "localhost" like lan address. the most common are 10.0.0.* and 192.168.1.* or 192.168.0.*, are exempt like localhost is.

there are times where i will want to test/debug on a localhost on my ipad/android. I can't easily alter my host file for non jailbroken/non-rooted devices, so i have to alter the base url in my conf_global.php to my computers internal network address so i can access the install from my ipad/android. However, I've already burnt up my test site "usage" on like 2 of my license cause of this (due to upgrading/installing, without realizing i was still on the internal network address). 

I do think this to be a vital exception to make, as most of the work i've been doing lately has to work flawlessly on a mobile device.

[JiigSaaw]

I needed to use my testinstall key with a subdomain (dev.mywebsite.fr) and edit hosts files to work on localhost....

127.0.0.1 and localhost are not working for IPS, asking for a valid key all the time, it's boring...

[Joy Rex]

On 8/18/2016 at 11:16 AM, CodingJungle said:

I do think this to be a vital exception to make, as most of the work i've been doing lately has to work flawlessly on a mobile device.

I'm sure you already know this, but Chrome's Developer Tools has a mobile emulation mode that works well for 90% of mobile development testing... of course, nothing beats the real thing.

[CodingJungle]

21 minutes ago, Joy Rex said:

I'm sure you already know this, but Chrome's Developer Tools has a mobile emulation mode that works well for 90% of mobile development testing... of course, nothing beats the real thing.

Its good for testing out the responsiveness of a design, but that is about it. any of the things that iOS/android does that is not in common with a web browser like (swipe, touch/hold, loading sound/video on load, etc) it doesn't duplicate any of this. 90% is a bit generous imho, i would say its about 50% when you get down to development of features that actually relies on what a touch device can do. 

Like when i was developing babble, i needed to know when a thread was "frozen" by iOS/Android when the device screen was turned off, the tab wasn't focussed or the browser was in the background, cause those things would all trigger a disconnect from the socket, and i need to re-establish the connection. I wasn't able to debug/develop this with a desktop browser.

iOS is also much more strict when it comes to javascript errors, often times where a desktop browser will continue to function, on iOS (in chrome or safari) the javascript wouldn't work at all cause of a error that the desktop browsers do not throw. 

also not to mention how difficult it actually is to debug on a iOS device when you don't have a macintosh, often times you have to rely on lib/app for nodejs that can capture and output errors or console data to nodejs, and its far easier to set these things up on a localhost than a remote server. 

so it would be extremely appreciated if IPS would extend the "testinstalls" that wont burn up a dev url to a more robust lan schemas other than "localhosts"

[Joy Rex]

@CodingJungle - I know you would prefer testing on native iOS devices, and I may have good news for you...

MAMP Pro just came out with their 4.0 version, and one of the new features is a MAMP Viewer for iOS:

[CodingJungle]

I use Ubuntu, I don't own a mac.

[teraßyte]

Yeah, I use a similar solution myself because I have my dev boards on a NAS in my home network and not on localhost.

[Joy Rex]

On 9/3/2016 at 10:09 PM, CodingJungle said:

I use Ubuntu, I don't own a mac.

So do I (on my Production forum), and MAMP is also for Windows - just trying to be helpful!

[bfarber]

There is a lot of potential for abuse in doing this, unfortunately, so it's not likely we will make this change.

Nevertheless, this isn't really a developer-level decision. Naturally we could make such changes but this is more a policy decision and not something a developer is going to change without first a policy change being implemented.

[Colonel_mortis]

Just now, bfarber said:

There is a lot of potential for abuse in doing this, unfortunately, so it's not likely we will make this change.

Nevertheless, this isn't really a developer-level decision. Naturally we could make such changes but this is more a policy decision and not something a developer is going to change without first a policy change being implemented.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the only way that I can see a non-routable IP being abused is if you used a reverse proxy and rewrote the URL to the IP before passing it on, but that is just as exploitable with localhost. More to the point, I doubt that anyone does that anyway, because subverting the license checker is far, far easier.

If you don't change it, developers, myself included, will still continue to use (private, custom) modifications to allow us to test our apps/plugins/themes on a real mobile device, but the easier you make our life, the happier we are. I think that matters to the success of your product more than you, and management, appear to realise.

[bfarber]

Some clients actually use our software on internal networks - so in theory they could buy one license and have 10 internal sites with one license key.

Nevertheless, technicalities aside (yes as a developer you can hack around license checking - it is viewable source software after all), management would need to change our policies before we could make this change at the software level. I will ensure I point this topic out to the management team.

[CodingJungle]

ignore me, i can't read.

[Lindy]

While I understand and appreciate the unique circumstances a few of you have, I'm afraid we would not be willing to make any changes to the licensing model that would introduce further grey areas, sorry. 

Also, as an aside, please keep in mind, this forum is world-viewable. Please do not post code snippets that demonstrate how to circumvent aspects of the licensing system. 

Thanks for your cooperation.