[Bf-python] Support listing of multiple versions of the same addon

[Nathan Vegdahl]

I realize there are nay-sayers here who for some reason think this is
a bad idea, but there really are meaningful use cases for this, many
of which have already been outlined in this thread by myself, Clemens
Barth, and Domino Marama.  This is a feature that is transparent and
will not hurt you if you don't use it, but does hurt you if you need
it and don't have it.

As I said earlier in this thread, enabling multiple versions of an
addon simultaneously is not part of the proposal.  There are too many
complications with that, and this proposal does not intend to support
that unless by accident.  Officially, enabling multiple version of the
same addon simultaneously would be unsupported.  (I don't think it
needs to be _enforced_, however, but I'm open to ideas for how to do
that nicely.)

What I'm looking for in this thread is brainstorming how best to
support what _is_ in the proposal, which is simply to allow multiple
versions of the same addon to be installed and show up in the addon
browser.

I think distinguishing between addons based on the version string is a
useful way to do this, I think.  By definition, identical version
numbers of an addon should mean identical addons, so I see no problem
in disallowing co-installation of same-versioned addons.

Clearly the back-end mechanics to make this work are going to be a
little trickier, however.  For one thing, at the bare minimum
different versions of the same addon need to be installed in different
places or with different names or something.  So some kind of standard
for that will be needed.

Ideas?

--Nathan

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Nathan Vegdahl <cessen at cessen.com> wrote:
>> How about copy the blender folder and then make a new shortcut to that
>> "version", there one can use different AddOns.
>
> Sure, this is a decent cludge for some of the use-cases for the time
> being.  My proposal is that we shouldn't need such a cludge, and that
> users shouldn't be burdened with having to have multiple installs of
> Blender just to install multiple versions of addons.  And it gets
> pretty ridiculous if you consider a user who wants even just a few
> permutations of different addon's various versions.
>
> --Nathan
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Carsten Wartmann <cw at blenderbuch.de> wrote:
>>
>> Am 26.02.2013 19:23, schrieb Nathan Vegdahl:
>> > A topic that has come up over on bf-committers is the possibility of
>> > supporting multiple co-installed versions of the same addon, without it
>> > showing up as a conflict in the addon browser.
>>
>> How about copy the blender folder and then make a new shortcut to that
>> "version", there one can use different AddOns.
>>
>> Of course there is the problem with the preferences stored into the user
>> folder. On Linux and with my own builds it stores them into the build
>> folder, so no problem here.
>>
>> Carsten
>> --
>> Carsten Wartmann: Autor - Dozent - 3D - Grafik
>> Homepage:         http://blenderbuch.de/
>> Das Blender-Buch: http://blenderbuch.de/redirect.html
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