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EnTerr
Roku Guru

roBitmap and the colon-centipede "Missing or invalid PHY"

I have shared before my distaste for warnings that mis-label themselves "errors" but are neither compile-time nor runtime errors. Or aren't they? I hate the waffling:
Brightscript Debugger> bmp = createObject("roBitmap", "images/roku-logo.png")
*** ERROR: Missing or invalid PHY: 'images/roku-logo.png'

Brightscript Debugger> ? bmp
invalid

I did something that RTFM told me i can do! See the examples - unqualified file names. So ok, i know colon-centipedes show Co's deprecation of certain practices, i'd assume here is a frown to not using absolute file names (and why not, if i may ask?!). Except turns out, something has changed in the Roku bowels and now it is a proper error, except it's shown as "improper error"...

At the least, how about fixing TFM to say fully-qualified paths are required nowadays?
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4 REPLIES 4
belltown
Roku Guru

Re: roBitmap and the colon-centipede "Missing or invalid PHY"

Just curious, was there ever a time where you could use relative pathnames? I'd always assumed that those roBitmap examples were erroneous, given that:

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/File+System#FileSystem-Pathnames:

There is no concept of a current working directory or relative paths. All path names must use the absolute Roku Streaming Player Pathname format above.
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: roBitmap and the colon-centipede "Missing or invalid PHY"

"belltown" wrote:
Just curious, was there ever a time where you could use relative pathnames? I'd always assumed that those roBitmap examples were erroneous,

I have it on good faith (gentleman's... scout's honor?) that it had worked once upon a time as shown and (generally speaking) the examples in the docs have been tested. Notice there are 2 examples that are awfully specific - would have to be conspiracy theorist to speculate that was typed-but-never-tested...

To satisfy archeological cravings, probably should dig out yer olde PDFs on this 8-)
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RokuKC
Roku Employee
Roku Employee

Re: roBitmap and the colon-centipede "Missing or invalid PHY"

"EnTerr" wrote:
...
and (generally speaking) the examples in the docs have been tested.
...


The error message and return value are correct.
Relative paths are not (and have not been) supported on the Roku platform.

With respect to the documentation samples, unfortunately, I can attest that many of the legacy examples are not functional on the Roku platform.
I'm surprised that a Roku representative would claim that they are 100% tested and correct.
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: roBitmap and the colon-centipede "Missing or invalid PHY"

"RokuKC" wrote:
With respect to the documentation samples, unfortunately, I can attest that many of the legacy examples are not functional on the Roku platform.
I'm surprised that a Roku representative would claim that they are 100% tested and correct.

No Roku rep has told me examples are 100% tested and correct - did i leave that impression? - sorry if i "misspoke" somehow. It's the "implied warranty" of documentation that i trusted, esp. something that has been published for five years or so, chaff should have been blown away. That's why we say "RTFM", right? 
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