Extensions: Versions and standard naming convention

[Moriarity]

I use a fair few extensions in FG and I'm very grateful for the work developers, both FG and independent have put into providing these little gems for the community. Unfortunately, many of the extensions don't have the version number on the description or on the extension filename and I spend a great deal of time checking to see if I've got the 'latest' edition of an extension - this is particularly prevalent now as some extensions don't work in Unity. Is there any way FG can provide/use a standard naming convention (file-name and title/description) and guidelines to make this rigmarole a little easier for us DMs? At this time, it would also be really useful to mark in some way those extensions that are FGU compatible. Stay in and keep safe, everyone.

[superteddy57]

The general practice is to place the version in the announcement. At least this is my practice. The reasoning for not including the version into the filename is due to the added step of removing the old one. Same name files can be overwritten quickly to get back into the game. This is just how I do it and my reasoning. There isn't any current guideline to this practice. Also, not a very easy to monitor as well. But, I would like to hear thoughts from other developers.

[Trenloe]

It is a pain to try and keep on top of extensions, versions, updates, etc.. But, without imposing a rigid structure on extension developers, which still many wouldn't adhere to, there's not much that we can actually do - short of someone in the community spending hours and hours testing, updating posts/documentation, keeping track of issues, etc., etc..

If we try to force community developers who kindly share the fruits of their labour with us to have to do extra tasks before they can share their work, then we're in danger of much less people sharing their community FG content. As a community moderator I've always had a pretty light touch with people posting stuff on the forums (except where it comes to copyright infringement - then I become the copyright police!) but I've been accused by a couple of users (one was a very active community developer) over the years of forcing people to "conform" to even the most basic of practices - and they actually took big exception when I simply asked someone to at least test their extension to make sure it worked before they uploaded it to the forums! Now that was, of course, an extreme reaction - but it just goes to illustrate the wide and varied view community developers can have.

Also Dulux_oz spent a lot of time putting together a framework to allow for automatic tracking and checking of extension versions. But it required the developer to jump through a number of hoops, so it had very little uptake by the community.

So, in the end, without a community member spending many hours a week collating info (I used to do this a few years ago, but it is just too much work) or devs being forced to follow a specific process (which requires enforcement and could lose developers) or SmiteWorks dedicating a full time resource to this (which would be a huge resource sink that could be better spent doing FG work elsewhere); then there's really not much of an answer to this.

As @superteddy57 mentions - it's not a great idea to change filenames, as this results in users having more than one version of the same extension loaded on their system and they don't know which one to activate.

The main standard we try to adhere to (but this isn't always done) is for a community developer to create a new thread for each of their extensions and keep version tracking, links, discussion for that extension in that one thread - updating the first post with key info. This usually works quite well, but can fall down if the dev leaves the community or moves on to other interests and stops updating/tracking their old extension.

So, sorry @Moriarity, unless a community member steps up to do a lot of organising, we're pretty much left with the situation we have now.

[Kelrugem]

I do not use version numbers, but that started simply as that because I am not a coder, I basically started coding with FG and it didn't came into my mind to track version numbers because I am not used to think about something like this :D So, you could simply ask the corresponding developer whether they want to add such a thing, maybe they didn't think about that but would support that idea :)

I normally handle it in that way: I always recommend subscribing to the threads of your extensions, then you get email notifications and you have a list of your extensions then basically also here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/subscription.php?folderid=0 (but the latter only works when you otherwise normally not write in a lot in other threads etc., otherwise you have a lot of other threads there, too) :)

I tried Dulux's solution but I was never able to make use of that.

[Moon Wizard]

My suggestion is to provide a version number in the extension announcement; so it can be easily seen when a campaign is launched.

The file names and extension names should not use version numbers; as this would create multiple entries in UI and cause user confusion.

Regards,
JPG