Thread Tools Display Modes
08-13-09, 03:47 PM   #61
Slakah
A Molten Giant
 
Slakah's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 863
Originally Posted by CobraA1 View Post
I've seen many versioning systems use a simple "build number" - a simple number that starts at the bottom and counts up every time it detects a change.

In this case, Minion could provide something similar - an "upload number," which is nothing more than a simple counter that counts up every time the author uploads a new build, and which cannot be changed or modified by the author.

Then, it's simple to check if an upload is more recent or not, and you don't have any time zone translation issues. And you can keep all of the versioning schemes that authors have.
The main problem isn't just the versioning for mods on this site, but ones which have old versions on WoWI and newer versions on curse.
  Reply With Quote
08-13-09, 05:20 PM   #62
Verissi
Premium Member
 
Verissi's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 99
Originally Posted by Ragnaar View Post
From an end users point of view, all I see here is a few addon developers not wanting to conform to a suggestion that would help the rest of the community because of "why?". As an end user I don't understand your reluctance to conform to a standard. We, as people, conform to standards everyday of our lives. And this is such a minor thing that would have a major impact on Minion and how it works. It has already been admitted in this thread that indeed standardized versioning would make things much easier for Minion. I mean, some of you make it sound like it some kind of a major deal to having a standard. Sheesh people, it's a WoW addon for heavens sake. It is just NOT that big of a deal.
To be honest, version numbers and schemes often mean something specific to the individual authors, even if they don't make sense to the end-users. As was posted earlier, this "problem" has been around for decades, so it's obviously not an easy thing to solve. In my professional career, I've seen more "standards" than I can count, all of which were equally valid. One employer used a date and build combo, another used major.minor.sub versioning, yet another used internal assembly numbers that were associated with hardware batches or PROM rev differences, and there were many more. None were "better" than the others per se, just better for the environment and needs of that specific employer (and not one of them ever considered customer needs in deciding on their "standard", on a side note).

Yeah, "it's just a WoW addon", but consider the varied backgrounds of the authors - sometimes, they like their system better for reasons beyond just "because I said so". Personally, I use what most would consider "an acceptable standard" since my existing local revision control "workflow" already uses that scheme, but I can imagine that others would be upset if they had to suddenly shift from the "r49" style to major.minor.sub.

The real problem here isn't that we don't have a versioning scheme standard, nor is it that the myriad of versioning schemes can't be parsed into tokens. It's simply that no comparison criteria can be established for those that aren't strictly numeric. Even major.minor.sub can throw a curve by adding "alpha" or "beta" to the end, even if it conforms to a specific format. It's an unenviable problem to solve and, honestly, I'm not sure there is a proper solution in the absence of author community consensus and some type of enforcement mechanism across all hosting sites.

Oh, and for the folks that mentioned that "Vista" wasn't a version, you're only partially correct - the version number that's reported is a combination of NT core kernel version and the build, with only a subset of build numbers corresponding to the Vista family. Several "versions" of Windows actually share the same major/minor NT core kernel version (often sharing build numbers too), despite being different overall products. You find this much more often with MS's contracted builds than with their retail consumer products, but it does happen within the commercial product families as well. Just a fun little fact

Originally Posted by CobraA1 View Post
In this case, Minion could provide something similar - an "upload number," which is nothing more than a simple counter that counts up every time the author uploads a new build, and which cannot be changed or modified by the author.
This won't work at all if an addon is manually updated or updated by another client, and may lead to a potential downgrade if an addon version hosted on WoWInterface lags behind Curse/etc. If Minion is the only thing being used to update addons, then an internal-to-WoWInterface/Minion tracking number wouldn't be a bad idea, but I would guess that most people currently use a combination of Minion, the Curse client, and manual updating, so it's just not realistic.
__________________
"I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." - Sir Isaac Newton
"Half of twice as intimidating as Saurfang is still one whole Saurfang worth of intimidation." - Anticlaus, Gorefiend server
  Reply With Quote

WoWInterface » Site Forums » Minion » Archive » Pretty disappointed...

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off