Updating a tooltip addon? (PhanxTooltip)
 

Hello,

This question is pretty general and maybe incomprehensible but I'll do my best.

Every big patch, another set of game content usually is accompanied by another set of addon woes.

I can use PhanxTooltip as an example, a pretty basic addon that I've used for a while and grown fond of. It has been spitting errors like no tomorrow since the 7.0.3 patch which can't be good for client stability even if things appear to run fine, right?

Whenever I see simple but popular addons get abandoned there is usually someone to pick it up and keep it up to date in a heartbeat and say "I just add a line here and it should run fine".

Is it that simple for someone like me with no lua knowledge? Is it easy to keep addons updated yourself unless it's a bigger dog as long as long as you don't want new features?

Thanks!

In the case of Phanx's addons, I would say let her know about the errors and just wait. Each addon page has instructions on how to report problems. It seems the majority of authors have multiple projects they work on, forums they participate in, games they play, and not to mention trying to have a life too. Patience is very important.

From personal experience I can't write a lick of code myself. Thanks to this site and it's community though, I can understand some of what I read in others code. The trick is to start with a small addon and learn how it works. Maybe make a change and see what happens. And of course, ask questions.

It really depends on the changes and why the addon breaks.

Use BugSack and take a look at the line something dies on, look for API changes (usually it'll show up on the forums here) and you can fix problems easily like that with fairly little knowledge (like parameter order changes, name changes, etc). Also looking at similar addons and the comments / notes on the big 3 (wowinterface, wowace, curse), even the bug-tickets sometimes contain correcting code.

Beyond that, you have to have at least a basic knowledge of programming concepts to be able to affect a repair.

^ This. I haven't had an active subscription or any interest in playing WoW in 8+ months (around the new year I upgraded to a larger SSD and switched to Linux as my main OS, and didn't get around to figuring out how to run the Battle.net app under Wine until very recently). I hadn't really planned on doing anything further with my addons, but when the patch hit, it turned out I wasn't quite ready to let my babies die, so I am slowly updating them on a trial account.

However, there are about 50 of them to update, and I still have other hobbies and responsibilities, so it's taking a while. PhanxTooltip needs more than just a TOC bump (honestly it's probably just a few minor API changes, but that's still research I have to go do to find the new function names/returns) and doesn't have a very large userbase, so it's pretty far down the list as far as update priority goes. It will eventually be updated, though. If it's working for now, just ignore the errors.

In TipTop, I had to change this check:
to this:

Thanks, I appreciate the update. I'll just stick around and wait, don't worry. :)

I just thought you had stepped down completely given the support we are getting by other people on your bigger projects, which resulted in this thread. I'm a long time user of Grid since early TBC, among other addons of yours so I'm very appreciative of your work over the years.

Btw, you want any info from bugsack or do you have a hmm of whats going on?