How are people managing TOC versions?
 

Hi all,

I am sorry if this stuff has been discussed I tried to do a basic Google first.

I was wondering how are people managing the various versions of their addons? Specifically if the addon works fine for TBC and Vanilla classic for example, do I really need to release a separate version that only has an updated TOC and nothing else just so it won't be reported as out of date?

It seems kind of tedious to have to create and maintain three projects for one addon, especially when you factor in keeping many different addon sites updated like here, Curse, etc.

I am in the middle of a lot of crazy RL stuff so I haven't been playing WoW and because of that I am not clued into how people are navigating this. Are we creating three separate projects and releases for each addon we have and maintaining them on all the various sites, or is there a better way (like maybe some way to define multiple versions in the TOC)

Welp I kept searching and eventually found an answer although I haven't tried it yet. Seems it was much easier to find when I actually used Google instead of DuckDuckGo. Here is what I found just in case someone else sees this with a similar issue:

If an addon is loaded on the BCC client, the client will first look for a TOC file whose name is suffixed by “-BCC” (eg. “MyAddOn-BCC.toc”) and load that if present. If not, the client will fall back and load “MyAddOn.toc”.

If an addon is loaded on the Classic client, the client will first look for a TOC file whose name is suffixed by “-Classic” (eg. “MyAddOn-Classic.toc”) and load that if present. If not, the client will fall back and load “MyAddOn.toc”.

If an addon is loaded on the Retail client, the client will first look for a TOC file whose name is suffixed by “-Mainline” (eg. “MyAddOn-Mainline.toc”) and load that if present. If not, the client will fall back and load “MyAddOn.toc”.

I don't think the MyAddon-Mainline.toc will be usable until 9.1 so best to leave MyAddon.toc as the "Retail" .toc.

This might have changed...

More and more of us are using the BigWigs Packager (thanks for all the help, Ketho!) which can create zips for all three versions of the game and upload to Wowinterface, Curseforge, GitHub, and Wago. I create one ToC file to rule them all, and for simple projects all you need is one .pkgmeta file along with your Lua/XML addon code.

If the addon gets a bit more complex, requiring addon code and/or .pkmeta files for each game version, you set it up once and forget about it. The initial bookkeeping for such complexity is a little tedious, but once you are done, it's done.

What about version number differences ?
 

I manually zip my files up and upload manually to this site. I haven't delved into the multiple version toc file yet as I don't know how the versioning system will be affected.

Currently I use wow's version numbering as my addons versioning to keep on top of when it was last updated and tested and shown working ( for the most part ). Now, seeing as we have multiple toc files that can hold a different set of files ( if needed ) and a different version number, I could manage different versions by having a different file handle version specific functionality where possible and if .. end blocks when not but until download tools have the facility to show the different version numbers alongside the games supported I'll stick with my current system of Retail for all my small addons until someone asks for a version for Classic and Retail, Classic, BC Classic for nUI which is the only addon that has been updated for the different game types available.

For people that dolwnload manually (and there are some) only having to download/unzip once then copy to the different path makes life easier especially as the number of Classic cients grow and no indication if downloaders will support one addon, multiple .toc checking.

The biggest bonus for me is I can have the addon under retail and setup symlinks to the other clients so I only have to make changes in one addon. -xxx.tocs with seperate .lua files for one or more versions or in-code version checking, you don't have to worry about where you're working or replicating changes as it all happens in the one addon :eek:.