Curse + Minion - First Impressions

[jashan]

First of all: BIG CONGRATZZ to the release!!!

I thought I'd share real quick my first impressions of running Minion side by side with Curse (on a Mac, that is).

I guess I have 100+ addons, so I went through the list and checked the versions (side by side ... literally ... good to have two monitors ;-) ).

Most addons have the same version on both sites. Quite a few are much more recent on Curse, however, there's also some where WoWInterface is (significantly) ahead. So, it does make sense to really compare addon per addon and either ignore on Curse or on Minion.

This took me a bit more than half an hour ... probably I should take the time to clean up my addons a bit, I'm not even using all of them but cleaning up also takes a lot of time so I'll leave that for later. ;-)

Comparing both clients, I'd say that Curse seems a bit more evolved but I guess that's obvious. For instance, one thing that Curse does very nicely which Minion doesn't seem to do too well, yet (it at all) is combining different folders of the same addon into one. For that reason, I keep managing all addons that have the same version in Curse.

After doing the update with Minion, Curse finds 14 addons that are "outdated". So either I missed some of them (possibly due to Curse doing better "keeping stuff that belongs together together"), or Minion didn't get some of my "Ignore Permanently" commands.

Unfortunately, some addons have really odd version numbers and use differnet versioning for Curse and Minion. That sucks. One thing I prefer in Curse is that it shows the "last updated date". That's missing in Minion and makes handling those odd versioning systems somewhat difficult.

7 addons are displayed as "The addon does not correctly match our database. May have been modified by a third party." by Curse after the update with Minion. Hm ... wasn't this what they said WoWMatrix does? ;-) just kidding ... guess that's because some Addon authors post different stuff to the different sites. For me, that was Ace2, ArkInventory, ChatThrottleLib, Dock, Fishing Buddy -- Merge Data, MapNotes and SharedMedia-Blizzard.

Hm ... I don't remember ever installing "Give Me Mound" and "Give Me Pet" ... but that might be my mistake ;-)

Ok ... Curse Client seems a little bit broken now: Deadly Boss Mods, MCom and Natur EnemyCastBar are displayed as requiring update each time I open it - even though I did the update just before. Admittedly, the update fails - but that didn't happen before ... and it's unlikely (though possible) that this is just a temporary problem from Curse (this started happening after my update with Minion).

Well, I'm happy - finally I got all the addons updated that I previously updated with WoWMatrix and that were not available from Curse. Now let's see if I can still play WoW ;-)

... seems to still work ;-)

[orionshock]

If minion does anything like the old updater did, it places a ID file in each folder it updates so that the updater dosn't need a local file cache of what you have installed. CurseClient probbably dosn't remove this file if both programs manage the addon.. this could cause some interesting problems with curse client not updating things properly.

[acapela]

so far, this has been relatively smooth for me. amazing results for a volunteer offering (i expect Shirik is being pounded right now, though... been there, done that ).

sorted through the addons i mantain via WoWInterface, set the rest to ignore, figured out how to work around my local proxy (i turn it off temporarily before starting Minion, turn it back on again when i am finished), figured out the intricacies of Minion's "heuristic" dependency analysis (which has some teething trouble right now, but that is to be expected), and things now seem stable.

no incompatibilities with Curse. seems like Minion maintains some sort of external/local database of version numbers, which probably explains why it can start up and detect updates about 100 times faster than the Curse updater.

of course, the advantage of the Curse updater process (examining actual addon folder contents, as opposed to some sort of local database) is that it detects real discrepancies between what is installed and what is available to install... but since i don't expect to maintain addons interchangeably between Curse and WoWI (i pick one place or the other as the authority), this is perhaps not an issue.

i have way more than 100 addons, however... configuring all of this took more than 30 minutes .

grats to Shirik and the whole WoWI team on this. it is much appreciated.

[FeatherySatirist]

Judging by information and conclusions gathered here, it appears that Minion may try and download the add-on who's name or description most matches the name of the add-on on your computer. It is for this reason that my add-on "BigWigs +CommonAuras" downloaded instead "Power Auras Classic." In the short term, here's my solution:

1. Run Minion and "Update All."
2. Close Minion.
3. Run Curse.
4. Starting with the add-ons labeled with a Red Warning symbol, go to the corresponding page on both Curse and WoWInterface (both Curse and Minion have links to the website for a particular mod; Curse's button is part of the UI; Minion's button is from right-click > More Information) and decide which one appears to be updated more often or more regularly. These are the add-ons which Curse and WoWInterface have the same version. One or the other is personal preference, really.
5. Repeat Step 4 for all of the add-ons labeled with the Red Triangular Warning symbol.
6. Repeat steps 4/5, but for the add-ons that Curse deems need to be updated. These are the add-ons that the version on WoWInterface is a downgrade compared to Curse (for example, a mod or two of mine were downgraded to old versions that were used for the WotLK beta, whereas Curse has 3.1 versions).
7. Close Curse.
8. Run Minion.
9. Starting from the top, go to each add-on listing, right-click, and go to "More Information," again.
10. For any add-ons that WoWInterface does not host, Minion has downloaded the next best thing (refer to the introduction of this post).
11. For any add-on listing that you click on that takes you to a completely different add-on, mod, or library (you'll have the most fun with any add-on that contains the word "Fu" or "Ace" in it), right-click > ignore permanently.
12. Close Minion.
13. Run Curse.
14. Make sure there aren't any more glaring issues.
15. Using Curse (Curse because it will show you the names of the add-ons you need to look for), uninstall every add-on that you don't remember downloading. You'll be looking for the names of add-ons that came up when you did step 11.

That ought to iron out the majority of your add-on problems, and explains why you have some random mods in your Interface folder that you don't remember ever downloading. Doing this process prevents Minion from downloading add-ons that it shouldn't in the future, and, to the best of my knowledge, prevent destructive interaction between Curse and Minion.

[eternal2u]

im using minion by itself sure i may be missing out on some bleeding edge mods that arent updater on curse and wowi at the same time, but i'd rather lagg behind a day or two than have my download speeds throttled..

thats just my two cents and why im not using curse well..ever again

[Bluspacecow]

Originally Posted by FeatherySatirist Judging by information and conclusions gathered here, it appears that Minion may try and download the add-on who's name or description most matches the name of the add-on on your computer. It is for this reason that my add-on "BigWigs +CommonAuras" downloaded instead "Power Auras Classic." In the short term, here's my solution: .

Wow that's long

Me personally I'm going to wait a few builds before I try minion again

And use my email method of updating