Is AVC broken?

[JordanL]

Hey, so I use and enjoy CKAN, and understand many mod-maker's positions on CKAN (maintaining the metadata), so opting out of maintaining that makes sense even if it makes my life a bit more difficult. Really, what I like most about CKAN is it's ability to help me discover mods that isn't easily reproduced by the stickied threads in the releases forum or other venues. In that respect, I've also never really understood mod-maker's suggesting AVC in place of CKAN. They solve different problems.

However, what I don't get is the almost fanatical support of AVC I see from the mod community. It comes pre-packaged with a lot of mods. I don't want a third-party app built into my game that sends information to private servers while the game is running. I just don't.

So fine, I just tell AVC that every mod isn't allowed to check for updates and then pray the source-code isn't malicious, right?

Except every mod still checks for updates. I know this because every mod still notifies me when there is an update. How exactly is this possible when I specifically said not to check? Why do so many modders force this on anyone using the mod if the AVC plugin isn't even running in good faith?

I really hate complaining about something like this, because any kind of mod is a labor of love and something that you shouldn't really put expectations on... but the forced inclusion of a plugin that sends data to private server regardless of my settings is rather uncomfortable. Is AVC just broken? Is this because this is how mod-maker's want the system to work? Do mod-maker's know that it's doing this when they package it with their mods?

[Streetwind]

14 hours ago, JordanL said:

I don't want a third-party app built into my game that sends information to private servers while the game is running. I just don't.

Isn't AVC specifically made to only read data, not send it? (I'm not sure on the specifics tbh.)

I agree though, I freuqently encounter cases where AVC basically does what it wants regardless of user settings.

[stibbons]

The MiniAVC plugin does a plain HTTP GET on the URL defined in the .version file for the plugin. That doesn't send much information, but it's still not a great thing if the user has opted out.

It's also worth noting that the MiniAVC plugin will still do local version checking regardless of the remote setting. It shouldn't know if there's a mod update available, but it will know, and warn you, if the KSP version doesn't match what the plugin's .version file indicates it's compatible with.

In addition, the AVC documentation states that if the full AVC plugin is installed, the MiniAVC plugin will disable itself. I'm not 100% sure because I've never used it, but suspect that means the full AVC plugin will go ahead and do remote version checks regardless of what you told the MiniAVC plugin it can do when KSP started up. But that would need testing to confirm.

All that said, I've never used the full AVC plugin, always instruct MiniAVC to not do remote checks, and have never noticed it doing remote checking. If you suspect it is, the best place to start is to look in the MiniAVC.log file in the root of your KSP install. Search for lines containing "remote version" or "UpdateAvailable". Even if "UpdateAvailable" is false, it means MiniAVC has performed a remote check.

Before filing a bug, though, it's probably worth checking that plugin's MiniAVC configuration, in MiniAVC.xml in the plugin directory, to make sure the AllowCheck parameter is indeed set to false.