API Mod auto-updates

Although I posted about this in a recent announcement thread, I thought it'd be useful to have a dedicated thread for any questions or feedback about the latest addition to the mod distribution/verification system: mod auto-updating.

Mod auto-update system

What is this? It means that as a server owner you can setup your mods to auto-update whenever the mod developer makes a new release of their mod. This also includes the initial install of the mod, so you don't have to use FTP or w/e to upload files to your server, you just need to add a line to your mods.cfg and the server will do the rest.

However, this only works for mods for which mod developers have registered and uploaded their mods to the Web API. Developers: use this app to do that: https://forum.kag2d.com/resources/kag-mod-manager.153/ (make sure you have the latest version if you've used it before). Also, make sure you the 'full'* checkbox is ticked when you're registering/updating your mod.

Now, how do server owners configure their servers to do this? Lets say there's a mod that's been uploaded to the API which you'd like to setup to auto-update on your server.
To do this, you just have to add a line to your mods.cfg. Up till now the lines in mods.cfg have just been the folder name that the mods are in. However, now you can add ' = dev:nameURL' to one of those lines (after the folder name), where dev is the mod's dev (either a username or devgroup) and nameURL is the mod's name URL field. Doing this will setup the mod that is identified with that dev:nameURL pair to auto-update, downloading into the folder specified.

Here's an example, based on Rayne's Islandrekt:
"Islandrekt = rayne:islandrekt"

This will download islandrekt and put it in Mods/Islandrekt for you.

Other details

• Any mod downloaded by the auto-update system will be verified, because the Web API ensures that the registration.json files in the downloaded package are up-to-date. So, blue thumbs-ups on the server browser are guaranteed if all your mods are installed in this way (or at least should be - if you're still having problems with getting verified please PM me, attaching the mod in question in a .zip/.tar.gz file so I can investigate).
• Mod devs: There is a special hard-coded path in your mod you can use to put .cfg files that you want to allow server owners to modify without failing verification: /settings (e.g. Islandrekt/settings - it should be in the top level of the mod's directory). When a server is auto-updating a mod it will try to preserve the .cfg files in this settings folder, provided that the mod package doesn't have copies of the .cfg files in it. So to make optimal use of this you should include default values for any settings file in your scripts (i.e. it should work even if the .cfg files are missing) and include a .cfg.example file showing the expected file format - server owners could then make a .cfg copy of these examples, which would not be overwritten by the auto-update.
• I suggest that, for convenience, mod developers post their dev:nameURL identifiers in their respective forum threads, but anyone can look up these details (plus whether or not the mod is available for this auto-update process) via the mod manager app.

Please post any feedback, questions, suggestions you might have in this thread.
* Those tickboxes will be useful in the future, but for now the only one that's supported by the game/auto-updates is 'full'.

 

So, it would be really great if all the mod devs (at least the ones that aren't specifically developing mods for use only on their own servers - though even those ones might find this useful as a means of updating their server & keeping it verified) could upload their mods to the API (via the mod manager app), so people could take advantage of this system.

 

Yeah I was thinking about doing something like that. Literally anyone could do it though, so maybe someone else will do it before I get around to it.

 

Well, people did make things like this server browser http://kag.ques.to/

Anyways, I might do it after I'm done with exams. Would definitely be cool if someone in the community did it first though.

 

You're showing the mod names but you need to show name url field too, as that is what goes in the mods.cfg file.
Ideally, show it as dev:nameURL so server owners can just copy and paste that directly.

 

Yeah that's much better. Also +1 for sort options.
Also, 'avaliable' -> 'available'

 

Could you specifically remove shadlington:test from the results? Its just there for me to check everything is working still, so would probably be best if it wasn't in your results.

Looking good though :)