[External program, WIP]Add-on version checker

[Tyrope]

Hello,

I was wondering if a tool exists that reads add-on version numbers from an on-line source somewhere and compares it to the locally installed version number.

If not, I'm interested in starting such a program and would like to know if there's developers willing to support this.

My current thoughts about details:

• Cross platform. (Python?)
  
• Easy to use: Run the program, see which mods are outdated.
  
• Centralized location of the version numbers. (github repo of text files?)
  
• (Optional) Links to forum thread/spaceport to update.
  

If such a thing already exists, a link to the thread would be highly appreciated. Perhaps I can help them instead.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Tyrope

[Headhunter09]

A good idea. I suppose the only roadblock is keeping an updated, extensive list of mods. Unfortunately, it seems like a fairly fundamental issue with the concept, rather than a technical hurdle.

I guess the problem lies in getting modders to accept and support whatever sort of central database system is created, which may not be easy.

[Faark]

There are a few Mod-Managers you can find in the Tools and Applications Forum. I never used them, so i cannot say whether one of them offer a feature you described.

@Headhunter09

Or who ever wants to provide such a feature has to maintain a list of addon version and download links themselves.

[TriggerAu]

For myself I was holding out for Spaceport2, but that seems to have disappeared someway along the way. Would be a really useful idea, the management of it, as above is the "interesting" part

[Tyrope]

So from what I gather, and please correct me if I'm wrong:

*) Has been tried before. (success unknown, but since no clear answer, probably not very.)

*) Biggest problem is keeping the database of mods & latest version number.

I guess my course of action then would be contacting the authors of the slightly more known mods and see if/how they would be willing to co-operate with providing version info.

[TriggerAu]

This is probably a good place to start - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55401-Community-Mods-and-Plugins-Library. Basically the manual version of what you are talking about (sorry I couldn't remember it before). I'm pretty sure nismobg manually updates that list as he finds things have changed if no-one tells him

[Trueborn]

One option for largely automatic version checking would be to get various mod authors to come up with a standardized way to title their mods on KerbalSpacePort with an easily parsed version number and then standardize a local versioning method (either a version.txt or readme.txt with the version easily parsable). That's a small enough amount of work that I think a lot of developers would be willing to adopt it. Of course, you run into a bit of a chicken and egg thing at the beginning though. But it would alleviate you from having to maintain some sort of current version list.

A good format for titles might be:

[compatible KSP version] Mod Name vMajor.Minor.Optional

You can then pull the version number by matching v[0-9]{3}.[0-9]{3}(.[0-9]{3})? in the web page. (roughly, anyway)

[TriggerAu]

One option for largely automatic version checking would be to get various mod authors to come up with a standardized way to title their mods on KerbalSpacePort with an easily parsed version number and then standardize a local versioning method (either a version.txt or readme.txt with the version easily parsable). That's a small enough amount of work that I think a lot of developers would be willing to adopt it. Of course, you run into a bit of a chicken and egg thing at the beginning though. But it would alleviate you from having to maintain some sort of current version list.

A good format for titles might be:

[compatible KSP version] Mod Name vMajor.Minor.Optional

You can then pull the version number by matching v[0-9]{3}.[0-9]{3}(.[0-9]{3})? in the web page. (roughly, anyway)

Or maybe the forum thread titles as lots of people dont seem to use spaceport now

[Tyrope]

I think I'm going to go ahead with this project and allow mods to have 1 file with the following information in a gamedata/somethinggoeshere/versioninfo file (Syntax is just an idea right now.)

{
    "NAME": "Testing",
    "URL": "http://example.com/mod_version.txt",
    "VERSION": {
        "MAJOR": 0,
        "MINOR": 0
    }
}

http://example.com/mod_version.txt would return the same thing, including the URL tag for verification. This so that people with a github repository or something can simply point to the current released source.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Tyrope

[Crater]

Quite a lot of module developers have multiple mods that they install into a single sub-folder of GameData.

e.g. bobcat, rbray, ASET, ThunderAerospace, SDHI (seems to be planning to go that way), TriggerTech.

Requiring a file called gamedata/somethinggoeshere/versioninfo would fail in those cases, since there are multiple mods installed below that level, and each will be versioned independently.

Alternatively, allow any file beneath GameData called arbitrartymodname.version - walk the tree looking for *.version, and parse the name and preferred install folder (if you need it) from within it.

[Tyrope]

Crater: That is an excellent idea. I'll make sure it's based on *.version files instead of version.info in a specific folder. Thanks for your suggestion.

This thread can be closed in favour of The release thread.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Tyrope
added source