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The Comprehensive Kerbal Archive Network (CKAN) Package Manager; v1.18.0 [19 June 2016]


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  On 5/2/2016 at 12:51 AM, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Is there a way to set CKAN to ignore hotfixes when figuring out if a mod is compatable? I was trying to set up a KSP directory using CKAN, but it didn't let me install a bunch of mods (for example, scatterer) because the mods were set to be compatible with 1.1 and I had 1.1.2.

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This has been asked at least twenty or thirty times in the last four calendar days.  Please scroll back and read the entries.  "No" for the end-user.  The mod author metadata controls that, for the most part.  And the person in the most control of the metadata (at least initially) is the mod author, from what I understand, though there are other hands on it to be sure.

Edited by MisterFister
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  On 5/2/2016 at 2:42 AM, MisterFister said:

The mod author controls that, for the most part.

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Well, it depends on how KSP versioning is implemented.  For mods using a AVC .version, you can specify a min and max version if you choose.  For mods on Spacedock, you can only specify one KSP version.  For mods that have neither of those, the version has to be specified directly in the metadata.

For mods that use a .version file, it's usually not as simple as just updating it - it's impossible to tell what future versions of KSP will be compatible, so most mod authors don't like to specify that future versions are compatible.  But if it's already been released then you need to have a new release to update the .version file, or re-release and somehow poke the NetKAN bot into updating it (not trivial apparently, and not accessible to individual mod authors).

Edited by blowfish
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  On 5/2/2016 at 2:43 AM, blowfish said:

Well, it depends on how KSP versioning is implemented.  For mods using a AVC .version, you can specify a min and max version if you choose.  For mods on Spacedock, you can only specify one KSP version.  For mods that have neither of those, the version has to be specified directly in the metadata.

For mods that use a .version file, it's usually not as simple as just updating it - it's impossible to tell what future versions of KSP will be compatible, so most mod authors don't like to specify that future versions are compatible.  But if it's already been released then you need to have a new release to update the .version file, or re-release and somehow poke the NetKAN bot into updating it (not trivial apparently, and not accessible to individual mod authors).

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I meant some kind of checkbox in the settings, or something. Like, "allow mods for versions later than X." (Another thing is maybe we could have the ability to check a box and have a mod download as soon as it updates. That would also be nice.) 

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So I've been reading this thread on and off all evening and haven't found this answer anywhere so please forgive me if I've missed this answer...

Has there been any reason given for why mods are now disappearing from the CKAN list entirely?  I removed my entire USI suite trying to track down a serious conflict but the vast majority of the USI suite is no longer even listed.  It was there, it showed me as installed, updated and current 1.1.2.  Now...nothing... :(

Voxvyq8.jpg

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Hi, i've just installed but i'm getting this error message 'Failed to connect to repository. Exception: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.' any ideas how i can fix this?

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  On 5/2/2016 at 6:20 AM, rasta013 said:

So I've been reading this thread on and off all evening and haven't found this answer anywhere so please forgive me if I've missed this answer...

Has there been any reason given for why mods are now disappearing from the CKAN list entirely?  I removed my entire USI suite trying to track down a serious conflict but the vast majority of the USI suite is no longer even listed.  It was there, it showed me as installed, updated and current 1.1.2.  Now...nothing... :(

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  On 5/2/2016 at 10:52 AM, RoverDude said:

I'm curious as well :wink:  hopefully a ckan person can let me know what's up.  For now you can install manually and use ksp-avc for the version checking.

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We just solved this with regards to InterstellarFuelSwitch, via some Netkan pull requests. :) If it's like that, then it's a dependency issue. For IFS we discovered it was listing an unnecessary dependency in the netkan metadata, one which was not showing as compatible with 1.1.2, and so the indexing was simply failing for IFS. It dropped out of the list entirely. Once the dependency was straightened out, it returned into the index just fine.

 

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Sure, the rub being I own all of the dependencies and in this case, CRP which itself has no dependencies is not being listed.  I'm going to just version everything up in case CKAN is having hiccups

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  On 5/2/2016 at 1:18 PM, RoverDude said:

Sure, the rub being I own all of the dependencies and in this case, CRP which itself has no dependencies is not being listed.  I'm going to just version everything up in case CKAN is having hiccups

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Ah, yeah that is very strange then. I wonder what else the indexer bot is doing then.

 

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  On 5/2/2016 at 1:23 PM, NecroBones said:

 

Ah, yeah that is very strange then. I wonder what else the indexer bot is doing then.

 

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One weird thing I noticed is that CKAN lists a number of mods as compatible with a 1.1.x install that shouldn't be, namely a number of mods with a "Max KSP version" of 1.0.x. Not sure if its related to the problem with vanishing mods, but it seems odd.

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  On 5/1/2016 at 11:34 PM, WildBillKerbin said:

I sure hope my comments were not taken as a complaint so much as an attempt at constructive criticism and commentary.

I (and hopefully most CKAN users) really appreciate all the hard work that the CKAN authors put into such a cool product.  Your contribution to the KSP community just can't be overstated and I do indeed thank you!

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Your comments where fair and needed to be said. I can speak for anyone else but I though you made you point quite well :)

CKAN authors are amazing and the project statistics are jaw dropping to prove it.

Although just for complete clarity here. To avoid any personal miss understandings. As far as my own contribution goes. I do not deserve any praise at all. I don't do anything apart from chuck money into various pockets ( If anybody is curious, Vitas for the spacedock server. Roverdude for herding cats, Pjf for CKAN sprints ). So if I am a pain in the butt to these people. The lease I can do is buy them a coffee now and again.

  On 5/2/2016 at 12:51 AM, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Is there a way to set CKAN to ignore hotfixes when figuring out if a mod is compatable? I was trying to set up a KSP directory using CKAN, but it didn't let me install a bunch of mods (for example, scatterer) because the mods were set to be compatible with 1.1 and I had 1.1.2.

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It depends on the definition of a hotfix across the whole community. Breaking MM could have been bad for a lot of mod owners. Plus I have seen comments off forum about having to recompile code. If it is a bigger change we have to wait to hear back from individual mod owners.

This has happened before. An example being  1.0.3 to 1.0,4 was a hotfix. 1.0.4 to 1.0.5 probably was not.

  On 5/2/2016 at 2:42 AM, MisterFister said:

This has been asked at least twenty or thirty times in the last four calendar days.  Please scroll back and read the entries.  "No" for the end-user.  The mod author metadata controls that, for the most part.  And the person in the most control of the metadata (at least initially) is the mod author, from what I understand, though there are other hands on it to be sure.

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Yes that is pretty much that is how is goes.

Although we could open the flood gates directly in CKAN and let them all through with a few lines of code. The question is should we if mod authors are saying it is not a hotfix. When the answer is has been no in the past and the ball gets tossed back into the modding community,  However for what is it worth. There is a link to the PR a few pages back if people want to voice an opinion on where or not it gets merged. 

  On 5/2/2016 at 3:25 AM, Hobbes Novakoff said:

I meant some kind of checkbox in the settings, or something. Like, "allow mods for versions later than X." (Another thing is maybe we could have the ability to check a box and have a mod download as soon as it updates. That would also be nice.) 

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This is a massive change in the way things are done. It has been suggested over and over since we started getting stable KSP builds.

So it is already done. Almost there. Honest......:blush:

Links posted a few pages back for those that want to read the code.

Edited by nobodyhasthis2
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what does this mean 

748 [1] WARN CKAN.KSPManager (null) - KSP_Ckan at /Users/xxx/Desktop/KSP_Ckan is not a valid install.

I'm running Ksp 1.1.2

Intel Core i5

2.7 GHz

26 GB ram

this comes up in the terminal as Ckan loads.

 

 

 

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  On 5/3/2016 at 7:41 AM, LeCosmopilot said:

Can author add possibilities to enable "mod force install"?

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ROFL, people have been asking for that for as long as CKAN has existed. The answer is, apparently, a resounding no.

From the CLI: ckan.exe upgrade <mod identifier>=<version> will force the issue. Get version and mod identifier from the gui (look at bottom of "metadata" panel for id) or by grepping through CKAN/registry.json.

I don't know where this attitude regarding user-overrides comes from, but it's a royal pain in the proverbial. So much so that I'm still doing manual installs.

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I would have to agree to making an option to have CKAN ignore existing installed mods or allow installation of older mods be considered.

 

I have an issue right now where CKAN is forcing me to uninstall mods that while technically work (Planetshine for example) under 1.1.2 haven't had their metadata updated. If I don't, I get an exception error that crashes CKAN when I try to install any mod that has a multiple config option, for example Custom Asteroids.

 

I keep getting a variation of this error: (Though obviously this one is for RCSBuildAid rather than Planetshine now that I uninstalled Planetshine to see if I can actually get Custom Asteroids to install.

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EDIT: And for those who are stating to just install them manually. The problem is that I still have so many of them installed, especially now that we have stable 64bit, that I sorta need CKAN just to keep track of them all.

 

I don't particularly fancy refreshing 72 forum threads daily just to see if one got an update just because CKAN is forcing me to uninstall my list every KSP version, which then causes the mod to become untrackable. Since there is no "favorites" list I can set up to have CKAN let me know when a valid update is available so I remember to reinstall it.

Edited by ExavierMacbeth
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  On 5/1/2016 at 11:43 PM, MisterFister said:

As requested by the mod author, I am reporting here that the Kerbal Stock Part Expansion mod lists a flawed forum URL in the metadata.  Is there any way I can assist in correcting this?

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You can try reporting the correct URL, rather than forcing us to re-do investigations you've clearly done yourself, at the very least.

Edited by politas
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  On 5/3/2016 at 3:30 PM, politas said:

You can try reporting the correct URL, rather than forcing us to re-do investigations you've clearly done yourself, at the very least.

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Here is the KSPX (Kerbal Stock Part eXpansion) thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/96464-11x-kspx-kerbal-stock-part-expansion-mod-reposted-v02101-20416/

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  On 5/3/2016 at 3:35 PM, JWag said:
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The KSPX homepage in CKAN is actually taken from the Spacedock page, so stupid_chris can fix it any time he chooses.

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I just want to start by saying that I greatly appreciate the work done by the CKAN team and that there's no ill will here.  That said...

I am uninstalling CKAN and have no plans to use it again.  CKAN's blind enforcement of versioning makes it completely unusable. 

There needs to be a way to allow the end user to override incorrect or outdated version numbers.  This would be a trivial change to implement and despite constant and overwhelming user demand for this feature, has been consistently ignored by the dev team.  I honestly cannot understand such a strong aversion to a needed and highly requested feature.  It is perfectly reasonable to have the versioning controlled by the mod creator.  However, ultimately this is my KSP install and I should be able to install a mod with the understanding that a version incompatibility might break my game.  That should be my decision to make. 

I've seen arguments that the end user can just do a manual install of the mods.  What is the point of using CKAN then?  Right now about half my mods are versioned at 1.1.0 or 1.1.1.  I would have to remove them all from CKAN and do manual installs.  Then I've got to regularly check spacedock for all of these mods to see if they've updated, manually delete them and re-enable them in CKAN.  That's worse than nothing.  I'm keeping track of CKAN mods on post-it notes and hammering Spacedock.  You're better off just doing it all by hand at that point.

Using the mod creators as the definitive version control is a good place to start but hardly flawless.  You see plenty of mods that have version requirements like 1.1.99 or 0.25.0+.  Are we to believe that a mod creator that was working back in version 0.25 knew for a fact that their mod would be compatible with 1.1.2?  There are other cases where the mod creator has confirmed that the mod works with the latest version but simply hasn't had time to update the version listing.  CKAN is correct in that the mod creator should be the go-to information source but assuming that the input data is flawless is provably wrong. 

I wish the CKAN the team the best but request that they reconsider their hard stance on this issue.  This single issue is taking an otherwise awesome utility and basically making it useless for the purpose it was created for - managing KSP mods. 

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  On 5/3/2016 at 3:38 PM, politas said:

The KSPX homepage in CKAN is actually taken from the Spacedock page, so stupid_chris can fix it any time he chooses.

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Sorry, that's bullcrap.  @stupid_chris has enough on his plate, please and thank you.  You were correct in suggesting to me that I had a great opportunity to provide a URL to you when I didn't, and that's something that I would've called out someone else for had I been an onlooker, so no worries on that item.  But then you get the info from someone who happened to log in before I had a chance to see this and respond, and your first response is "well I looked at it, no-ma-yob."  No.

I, right here, brought this to the attention of the CKAN thread.  (Yes, I erred in not providing more thorough information with URL links.)  "Well our info points to a SD listing, so that mod author can fix it any time he chooses."  No.  If I were reporting an issue with the SpaceDock listing being in error, then fine.  But this isn't a SpaceDock thread on the KSP forums, it's a CKAN thread.  I didn't report an issue with the SD listing, I reported an issue with the CKAN metadata.  The end-user product being delivered and discussed in this particular searchable and indexable conversation is CKAN.  The end-user experience being prioritized here is CKAN.  CKAN's metadata, at the end of the day, in my view as a user, is CKAN's responsibility and no one else's.  If others want to help or contribute (you know, like I did when I asked if there was something I could do to help after pointing it out) then that's fine.  If the mod author specifically wanted to help, then that's hunky dory as well.  But to offload it onto the mod author, summarily, nonchalantly like that?  No.

  On 5/3/2016 at 6:27 PM, DanHeidel said:

I just want to start by saying that I greatly appreciate the work done by the CKAN team and that there's no ill will here.  That said...

I am uninstalling CKAN and have no plans to use it again.  CKAN's blind enforcement of versioning makes it completely unusable. 

There needs to be a way to allow the end user to override incorrect or outdated version numbers.  This would be a trivial change to implement and despite constant and overwhelming user demand for this feature, has been consistently ignored by the dev team.  I honestly cannot understand such a strong aversion to a needed and highly requested feature.  It is perfectly reasonable to have the versioning controlled by the mod creator.  However, ultimately this is my KSP install and I should be able to install a mod with the understanding that a version incompatibility might break my game.  That should be my decision to make. 

I've seen arguments that the end user can just do a manual install of the mods.  What is the point of using CKAN then?  Right now about half my mods are versioned at 1.1.0 or 1.1.1.  I would have to remove them all from CKAN and do manual installs.  Then I've got to regularly check spacedock for all of these mods to see if they've updated, manually delete them and re-enable them in CKAN.  That's worse than nothing.  I'm keeping track of CKAN mods on post-it notes and hammering Spacedock.  You're better off just doing it all by hand at that point.

Using the mod creators as the definitive version control is a good place to start but hardly flawless.  You see plenty of mods that have version requirements like 1.1.99 or 0.25.0+.  Are we to believe that a mod creator that was working back in version 0.25 knew for a fact that their mod would be compatible with 1.1.2?  There are other cases where the mod creator has confirmed that the mod works with the latest version but simply hasn't had time to update the version listing.  CKAN is correct in that the mod creator should be the go-to information source but assuming that the input data is flawless is provably wrong. 

I wish the CKAN the team the best but request that they reconsider their hard stance on this issue.  This single issue is taking an otherwise awesome utility and basically making it useless for the purpose it was created for - managing KSP mods. 

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Oh dear lord, this speaks to me.  I can't find fault with any of this.  I'm beginning to consider doing the same thing.  I may retain CKAN as a method of discovering mods, on an otherwise manual install.

Ladies and gentlemen, go do a text search within this discussion for "ferram" and you'll see a clot of posts stemming from late October 2015.  I've spent a good... I dunno, two hours maybe(?) over the last two days reading those discussions.  FAR was perhaps the first high-profile mod that had this happen, but my understanding from having read both before and after that time period is that the human-issue was bound to come up eventually for someone.

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tl;dr -- I really like the idea of mod-authors' efforts and time investments being respected not only by users like me, but by fellow mod-authors and content creators.

Here's why I'm bringing this up here, and it's not for the mere sake of a history lesson or to watch myself type.  It was an example, perhaps the first very-high-profile example in CKAN's history (happy recent anniversary to CKAN, by the way) but by no means the most recent example, of users like me being put in the middle.  What do I mean by that.  I'm glad you asked.

Lookit.  I run mod-heavy.

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tl;dr -- I really like the idea of CKAN.  I know how to manage mods manually.

The fourth Great Debate is mods-vs-stock.  "Mods are cheating!"  "No they're not!"  "When it's stock, I'll consider it non-cheating!"  "Take that back!"  "Your kerbal wears combat boots!"  It gets nasty.

But it boils down to a fundamental question -- "How Is KSP Meant To Be Played?"  And the stock-with-no-mods conclusion I disagree with (obviously) but its logic is undeniable: mod management takes away from play time.  Mods, at their most absurd, have all of the hassles of DLC except financial cost to the user, with very few of the benefits.  And CKAN, very simply, brings very-mod-heavy play a lot closer to The Way KSP Is Meant To Be Played -- by playing it, instead of load-testing it.

So when arguably the two single most significant enablers of my ability to enjoy KSP amid my busy offline life (CKAN for time management, FAR for in-game aerodynamics) are competing with each other... frankly, it liquides ticks me off. [Edit; the adult-language autocorrect for "pi.ss.es me off" transmogrifies it into "liquides me off."  I find that to be just plain odd.]

I'm in law school (until I graduate in thirteen days -- yay!).  Law, communication, arbitration, and dispute resolution are what I do.  They are, quite literally, my stock in trade.  When I am put into a position where no matter what I do, I end up having to somehow side "against" another person who has done right by me in the past, that's unfair.  I am unavoidably either: 1.) contributing to CKAN's userbase, which is then used, even if unwittingly and unintentionally, as justification for "moral hazard" (an intriguing keyword hit within this particular forum thread, if you're curious for context); 2.) "just wanting my mods to work" and having to navigate forum thread responses from mod-authors who are obviously answering through gritted teeth when I bring a CKAN-metadata or KSP version compatibility question; 3.) being caught in the middle where I am literally telling someone like @NecroBones that there are mods pertinent to his work that simply disappeared from CKAN, whereas I come back here and see someone else get told by @politas that @Ippo can fix a metadata-listed forum link "any time he chooses."

Frankly, I'm privileged to be in the position that I'm in -- I benefit GREATLY from CKAN without being utterly helpless without it.  Just like I benefit greatly from MechJeb's Hohmann Transfer Planner, because I can't synch up an orbital rendezvous for excrements, [edit: a more understandable language-filter autocorrect] but I can dock decently even without NavyFish's DPAI mod, though obviously that makes docking a cinch.  The only downside for myself from dropping CKAN that I can see, beyond the time and convenience issue which I can work around, is the fact that there have been a fair few mods I discovered initially through CKAN, so I may keep the .exe for that standalone purpose.

I don't have to decide right now, and I also choose not to decide right now, but I'm seriously considering dropping CKAN.

Edited by MisterFister
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(I have just been pulled in the conversation by the mention and have no clue of the context of the post) Is there an issue with any of my mods' metadata? If that's the case, let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

Anyway, from what I gather of the post, the issue is twofold: the metadata and the source of the metadata. Yes, we can manually fix anything we want in the generated metadata, but if the source of the automatically generated metadata has a mistake, we'll keep generating wrong metadata that will need someone to fix it at every update. So it's basically like curing the symptoms without curing the illness.

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