HAKs - Versioning and Storing

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ç i p h é r
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HAKs - Versioning and Storing

Post by ç i p h é r »

To avoid any confusion over HAK versions (like we seem to have every so often with NWN1), we need to think about how to store version information for our HAK releases. I'd like to propose the following and see what you all think:

1. Store version information in the HAK title field. This information will go wherever the HAK file goes so if there are ever any questions about what version of the HAKs a player is using, it can easily be determined (client side trouble shooting).

2. Store HAKs in versioned directories. Directory names will contain the same version number that's in the HAK title field. This will allow users to download the version they need and allow us to keep an organized archive of our releases. We can thus revert to a prior release if a certain HAK release was somehow botched. However, we may need to limit how far back our release archives go depending on available disk space.

Another option is to just stick the version number in the HAK file name itself, but my main issue there is that it requires some file management, both by players (they'll need to clean up old files with every update) and by builders (they'll need to update their mods). That may or may not be a good thing.

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts. If you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks.
Last edited by ç i p h é r on Sat Aug 18, 2007 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by AcadiusLost »

I like the title field option best, with an annotation in the bundled "_xxx_hak.txt" file as well for reference (and to make sure it gets maintained). However, since NWN2 doesn't ship with an app that can open up the haks to display a version number, it means folks would need to have ERFinder or one of the others installed, so not ideal.

Still, I'd consider that the "least of all evils" so to speak.
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Looks like that's all the input we're going to get, so I'm going to go ahead and move forward with the proposal above. I've moved our HAK files to a v1.0 subdirectory of our downloads page and updated the links off the news article. For future releases, we'll put the version number in the HAK title field and in the text change log/revision file.
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