Question About Mod Requirements and SemVer Range

[VulcanTourist]

I don't think it's an understandable stance. Proper versioning (and naming and update marking) is part of the process, and a single misstep by just one author affects how many people when the dominoes fall? That said, the only "burden" that needs to be placed on authors is to simply read and learn the necessary process. It's not complicated. That can all happen right in the publishing form, if only it were updated to include what authors need to know and apply some validation like @HadToRegister and myself have suggested. So there's minimal burdens on authors and the site's Web design team, with the result that countless updates proceed smoothly and effortlessly for tens of thousands of people.

 

Those minimal burdens seem understandable to me.

[Guest deleted34304850]

well as far as i can tell, based on posts in the vortex forums, the only person affected up to now is me and i have a workaround.

[Pickysaurus]

I would love to enforce semantic. The problem is a good chunk of authors won't know what that is and I'd estimate somewhere in the region of 100,000 existing mods don't follow a semantic pattern (even if it's just 1.0 instead of 1.0.0).

 

At the moment we're giving a gentle push in that direction to see what reaction we get.

[HadToRegister]

I would love to enforce semantic. The problem is a good chunk of authors won't know what that is and I'd estimate somewhere in the region of 100,000 existing mods don't follow a semantic pattern (even if it's just 1.0 instead of 1.0.0).

 

At the moment we're giving a gentle push in that direction to see what reaction we get.

 

Well, IMO, they need to learn, they wouldn't go to a recipe site and use non-standard measurements there, so it should be no different here with versioning, maybe a preformatted thing?

 

such as: _._._

[Pickysaurus]

You've got to consider the back catalogue of mods with incompatible versions too.

[HadToRegister]

Well, it has to start somewhere.

Couldn't the database be parsed to correct the version numbers, such as stripping out the Letters? and Words, such as "Pastel", Beta" "Full" etc?

 

Empty entries could be given "0.1" or "1.0"

[Guest deleted34304850]

i think one of the many issues is that nexusmods can't change something they don't "own". they host the mods - they can't arbitarily change anything that the mod author has created, and i would assume that would include mod naming standards.

not to mention the absolute shitstorm if they ever made such a move.

[VulcanTourist]

Well, it has to start somewhere.

 

Couldn't the database be parsed to correct the version numbers, such as stripping out the Letters? and Words, such as "Pastel", Beta" "Full" etc?

 

Empty entries could be given "0.1" or "1.0"

Don't forget my personal favorite: "Final".

 

[Tannin42]

The version numbers are effectively useless and no automated process can make them more useful.

 

Imagine you have a mod with versions

1.1.0

1.1.0a

1.1.0b

 

-> Which is the "best" one? The b could be for "beta", the a for "alpha" and then it would be "1.1.0 > 1.1.0b > 1.1.0a".

Or the user might be using the letters to signify minor updates so "1.1.0b > 1.1.0a > 1.1.0".

 

And then there is the users who mistake the dots for decimal separators.

 

Which version is "better"? "1.0.15" or "1.0.2" ?

In Semantic versioning 1.0.15 > 1.0.2, because one is the fifteenth bugfix release of 1.0, the other is the second.

But some people will read it as "1.0 and 15/100" and the other as "1.0 and 2/10".

 

No one except for the mod author knows what they meant by that. The only way to bring sanity to that is to tell people how the versions are going to be interpreted _before_ they are entered. But considering we already have hundreds of thousands of mods that is not possible now.

 

That's just how it is: The version number on nexus mods is, and always will be, useless. Might as well consider it free form.

 

 

The only actual solution would be to take the current version field in the database and reframe it as a "tag" that is simply part of the name. Then for every mod in the db generate a new semantic version number based on a (openly documented) heuristic similar to what Vortex currently uses to determine updates.

From there on, don't allow the mod author to set the version field at all, instead they decide during upload whether the upload is a new file or a (full/partial) patch, feature update or breaking change to another file (which they have to select) and then the site increments the version automatically.

[VulcanTourist]

I hope something is done eventually. Updating is currently less fun than it should be. I have to keep a written list of those "updates" to ignore when I do a global update check because certain mods don't truly have updates, but Vortex thinks they do.