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05-16-09, 02:45 PM   #21
Bluspacecow
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 770
Originally Posted by Fin View Post
you say yourself, the author feels they should be getting something out to the public that's new with their addon - as a member of the public, and as a user of said author's addon, I'd like to see what that is, by installing it.
Personally I like my UI stable. I like that an addon I don't always use doesn't generate UI errors when I load it up to use for the 1 time I use it per week.

Any update you download has the potential to do so. I would prefer to know exactly why I should be installing this update. I don't like blindly installing stuff.

A change log will show what an author's changed about an addon.

Quickly examining change logs is central to my plan of updating. Without it I wouldn't be able to disregard 50-75% of the emails/notifications of updated addons I get. I only play in English so any localisation changes get thrown out. Similarly with Tagging changes.

With the "install it and see" method you run the risk of it either breaking something , eventually breaking something further down the line or changing how a feature of your addon works. And that means further wasted time for you when you have to go track down what went wrong , how it went wrong and how to fix it.

To me examining change logs isn't a waste of time because I'm not doing it every single day. Updating my addons isn't something I do a lot. So I don't really care if it takes 10 minutes or 45 minutes.

For me instead of blindly installing every update an author comes out with I examine the change logs instead (hint authors if you want me to install your updates just put the keywords "major rewrite" or "code optimisations" somewhere in it)
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