Keeping track of your mods

[Pingonaut]

I'm one who has an abundance of mods (upwards of 50, at least) and I've begun to keep track of them in a document. I keep the mod name, folders it comes with, mod creator, install date, priority, etc.

My question to anyone who'll listen is this: How do you keep track of your mods? If you keep some kind of list or document: how do you organize them? What order do you install mods (ex: visual first, utility, then parts).

Just looking for ideas to help me get more organized, outside of CKAN.

[micha]

I used to manage my mods via a spreadsheet (Linky Here), but now I use CKAN for most mods (sorry, I know that's not the answer you're after), being an avid Debian-user I am very much spoiled by a good package manager. While CKAN's not quite there yet, it is quite usable in its current form.

I'm hoping to contribute to CKAN once my work/kerbal balance switches back to kerbal a bit more.

[hab136]

Why track all that info?

[RainDreamer]

I just keep all my mods downloaded from the source in a folder called KSP mod storage. If a mod doesn't have a version number on the downloaded file, I add one. That is all. If I need to know which one was last install, I use window's list by last modified function, since I don't modify them at all nor have a reason to do so. I install my mod by the order they got updated. Whichever got updated first and I downloaded first will get installed first, then tossed over to the storage folder. Because I have the original files, if I need to know which mods have what folders, I just open them up and see.

[Pingonaut]

Why track all that info?

If you have to ask you probably aren't a heavy modder of your game.

-Keep me from deleting folders that multiple mods need

-Keep track of when I install mods so if I start crashing I can backtrack

-Know the names and when I install mods for updates

-Know what parts or configs of mods I use

-Many more reasons

[Drew Kerman]

How do you keep track of your mods?

See the link in my signature. Has worked extremely well for me since day one back in 0.23

[Alshain]

KerbalStuff tracks the mods you follow. Sadly, it only helps if the mod developers release on KerbalStuff

[Pingonaut]

See the link in my signature. Has worked extremely well for me since day one back in 0.23

I've actually been using it as a general guide for a very, very long time, but what kind of document do you save that in? The formats pretty different from what I do.

[Drew Kerman]

I don't save it in a document it exists as-is on the blog

[Van Disaster]

I install all my mods out of my game tree entirely, initially - in subdirectories named roughly after what area the mods cover, so "Air" has B9 & jet engine mods & so on. Then I'll see if they have any dependencies and install those into the main game so I can just forget about them, like firespitter's dll or Regolith. I'll usually put little enhancement mods like anything SPH/VAB related, or lifesupport, or FAR or alarm clock etc into the main game given I'll probably always be using them anyway. As for customising individual mods, I generally rely on either MM patches or just remembering to delete parts I don't use rather than documenting something that seems to change every release

After that, I wrote some scripts to symlink defined packages of mods into GameData from where they're installed, so I can quickly add & remove things for different saves - I have one I share with someone else at the moment so it's rather vital to get an agreed list of mods installed for that, and it lets me play around with new mods easily.

[Vindaloo]

Why not just use CKAN? I have 12 mods installed (granted its not 50) and it works great.

[Alshain]

Why not just use CKAN? I have 12 mods installed (granted its not 50) and it works great.

CKAN isn't perfect. Not all mods are on it, and if the developer of a mod should change, it falls behind. Trajectories is an example of it not working, it is out of date in CKAN because the author changed and the new author hasn't updated it.

It's a decent tool, but don't rely on it.

[Pingonaut]

Why not just use CKAN? I have 12 mods installed (granted its not 50) and it works great.

I'm not interested in mod management. I'm interested in keeping track of what mods I'm using. I use upwards of 50 mods and it really gets messy.

[tygoo7]

I don't really keep track of my mods...I just search around the forum and if there's an update, I download it.

[Superfluous J]

If you have to ask you probably aren't a heavy modder of your game.

I have 29 mods installed (though I think that list is out of date and I have a few more than that) and I don't keep track of any of them. I also don't use CKAN or anything else.

When I notice they're updated, I update them. It's really not a big deal to me.

[regex]

Before I started using CKAN I'd just keep a directory of installed mod packages in case some editing went bad. For the most part, though, I really don't care beyond initial setup; it's easy enough to just download it again.