An idea for a mod management system designed similarly to Gentoo Porta

[mizerydearia]

I just delved into the world of Skyrim modding. After some inconveniences with crashing and discomfort with relying specifically on some guides suggestive of what mods to install based on their standards, I considered that it would perhaps be more efficient to provide enough data to account for all mods to determine compatibility rather than relying on any one or more community or individual set of standards suggestive of what and what not to install. Certainly I still want to check out some mods that are not included in those standards, but due to compatibility concerns, I cannot do so so reliably without knowing what is causing the crash.

 

As a means of saving time for myself and others and for ease of installation, a package management system designed similarly to Portage seems like something that may be useful.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on this idea? Does it seem like something worth developing?

 

For those who are not familiar, or for reference:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_%28software%29

Edited September 15, 2013 by mizerydearia

[Werne]

To simplify for those who have no idea what Portage is - It's a Gentoo Linux package manager. It downloads software source code from online repositories, it can handle package dependencies (if A depends on B and that depends on C, it will download all three and install in correct order) and it compiles software from source to allow user customization to the code prior to compiling and installation.

 

This is waaay oversimplified so if you want to know exactly what it does, read the Wiki article liked by mizerydearia.

 

 

 

Now back to topic, a system like that would be an excellent idea, being able to download mods, handle mod dependencies and solve mod conflicts would result in people being able to get everything (mod and everything it depends on) with a single click, have everything installed automatically and have no conflicting mods. It would require a lot of work though, like modifying mod archives (or the site/database itself) to handle dependencies, creating an offline cache for searching mods and handling installed mods/dependencies, creating a GUI application (people don't like CLI for some reason), etc.

 

However, there's a problem with that, while GNU software developers actually know what they're doing and can put dependency/conflict data in their packages, most modders don't and can't understand/don't care about/don't know about mod conflicts. So a lot of mods would be left misconfigured because a modder doesn't know if his mod conflicts with anything. Some don't even list what the mod depends on, users find that out after their game crashes due to not having a DLC. There are more issues but these are the top ones.

 

Not to mention that the final call is Dark0ne's, he's the boss and I don't know how he'd feel with an online package manager handling his site's mods.

 

Bottom line is, if correctly implemented, it would be a bloody good thing and definitely worth developing. But it could be the best thing that ever happened, or a total clusterf***, that much is unknown. And all this gives me an idea...

Edited September 15, 2013 by Werne