View Single Post
08-06-09, 08:02 AM   #15
Myrathi
A Fallenroot Satyr
 
Myrathi's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 20
Originally Posted by forty2j View Post
And THEN, you need to get WoWI, Curse, and WowUI (or whatever their name is now), at a minimum, to all agree upon and enforce a format.
Not at all (though it would definitely be a good thing if they did all agree). You just need one of the sites to take the lead in enforcing a specific format and, when authors start following it, I'd expect the other sites to follow suit (being saved the effort of getting people to start). The biggest issue is getting authors to start doing it... but that's easily accomplished by requiring it on the submission page. Actually getting other addon sites to join in with enforcing version standards would be much better, though: it would benefit the community, as a whole.

Because the issue here isn't Minion serving up old versions hosted on WoWI, it's Minion serving up WoWI's latest version when the author only updated Curse this time around.
That isn't as great an issue as you seem to think if for no other reason than authors (at least, the ones I know) don't like uploading different versions to different sites (as previously stated by another poster). All it takes is authors starting to use the "version standard" in their addon just to get it on WoWI, then it will automatically have that same information in it when they upload it to another site. Bingo. Problem solved. The version-info is in the uploaded version across sites, regardless of the site, so the client-side Minion can look at the ToC and go "ooo! not latest!" and update or "hm. this one is more recent." and tell the user such.

If the version doesn't have the version-info in it? Then it's obviously an older version or it just doesn't follow standards and was uploaded before the standards were put in place. Either way, a simple "let's see if it has any sort of version" check could be done and, if it doesn't help, the user is linked to the WoWI page for that addon and the user asked to manually verify it. Give the user options; never force things on them.

That aside: if WoWI enforces the version standard to start with, the problem wouldn't exist and your point becomes moot.

What could be done better (than the example I gave) is if WoWI led the way with a "Minion TOC tag" that other sites could work upon and tied it directly to the author's version string (using the "new standard"): something more like "## X-Minion-Version: x.x.x"

In the end, it wouldn't actually matter if other sites decided to be spiteful and use a different standard, because they'd almost invariably use a different TOC tag to hold the value... and Minion could support that, as well.

... Which is why there is the "ignore addon" option.
A useful option within the software, regardless, but only of note in this discussion in relation to a user possibly "not wanting to upgrade past a specific version." Definitely useful for many reasons.
  Reply With Quote