Dependencies vs. Supported Add-ons

[sumghai]

Based on my personal experience dealing with many confused users who think that my add-ons "must" have "a lot of plugins" in order to "work", I'm wondering if it would make sense for us add-on authors to agree on some consistent terminology:

Dependencies - as the root word "depend" suggests, add-ons marked as this are required/compulsory for the main add-on to work.These could additionally be described as either Hard (i.e. will break badly if missing) or Soft (i.e. won't break, but won't perform as well) dependencies.

Supported Add-ons - these add-ons aren't required/compulsory, but if you do happen to have them installed, optional features become available.

And so, as stated very clearly in the OP of my SDHI SMS add-on, SMS actually only has three dependencies (ModuleManager, RealChutes and AnimatedDecouplers) but provides built-in support for a whole bunch of other add-ons.

Thoughts?

[OrbitusII]

Instead of doing the Hard/Soft dependencies, perhaps it could be Required (necessary for proper functionality), Recommended (not necessary, but improves functionality), and Supported (gains extra functionality upon installation). Whatever the case, I do like the idea of coming up with some standard terminology.

Edited May 2, 2015 by OrbitusII

[Mecripp]

I can see ( Required ) better then ( Dependencies ) but ( Supported Add-ons ) better then ( Recommended ) and really alot just comes down to people reading the first page then looking for the download and then posting something is wrong IMO and thanks to all you modders for the work and time you put in

[sumghai]

In hindsight, the distinction between hard and soft dependency is probably a bit much - however, it seems that CKAN uses the term "Dependency" rather than "Required" for compulsory add-ons.