addon version detection / advisory for blender
Addons can currently be installed regardless of the version they are designed for, in some cases thats great and they work well after they were designed too and in others its not great where they create lag or crashes.
my suggestion to solve it, could have an "unsupported" toggle that would allow/disallow you to install addons that are designed for that supported maj/min version
for example if i made an add on and its i know it works for version 3.6 to 4.1 i should have to put in a set of version tags in the info section that blender would check against its current version. having a support tag in code that will prevent 4.4 users from installing it unless they uncheck the "allow unsupported" toggle would not only help people but it would still keep their freedom of choice.
why, well bugs are frequent when addons start to rack up in the dozens, and end users may not even realise what they are installing, they often just see "ohhh cool thats a nice to have.....yoink".
multiple occasions ive had to fix bugging out blender due to old / undeveloped (for the current version) add ons that the end user "just installed" only to spend hours fixing something that could be solved before the user even considers installing it. thois could also help speed up the filtering of the add ons available in the repo.
4 Comments
Simply set the
blender_version_minproperty in the add-on's manifest file. docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/extensions/getting_started.html"Allow Unsupported" would be just asking for trouble though. Better to leave it up to the add-on developer to specify if a version is supported or not.
i think it should be a mandatory field not optional. the devs can test what versions they are deving for, and they can certainly spend 30 seconds to put it in some form. i think making it harder for unsupported addons to make their way into the newer / older versions is a plus, but i say the allow unsupported for two reasons, like me i need control and choice, second, devs need to to have access to to an unenforced environment, and it still at the end of the day gives everyone the "choice" while also making it stricter for those that want/need stability
thats just my two cents i think it could be useful and prevent a lot of addons from being issues.
theres something to be said about "knowing" what your installing before you waste time and resources on it.
Since the extensions system introduced in Blender 4.2, addons have a minimum and maximum versions field. The max version is optional,
but the minimal version is mandatory―erratum: they are both optional.Blender will simply refuse to install an addon on a Blender version that is outside the versions indicated by the developer.
And when looking through the extensions catalog from Blender, it will only show the compatible extensions.
i feel like they should be be forced to implement it, as in, blender requires that information for it to even consider installing as its currently is a mess, sometimes results in blender not being able to start.
enforcing it makes some sense in keeping blender running, clean and smooth, in a day and age with more devs than ever adding to extensions its pretty hard to know whats going to work and whats not when half the information needed isn't "required" by blender for it to be installed. How ever if it was those problems immediately disappear for the future. a lot of the extensions don't even have adequate descriptions lol.
there's currently no way in blender to see any addon ratings, or any platform other than the web browser, (kind of hard unless blender was willing to add a networked interface for that) but at the very least having it be able to fetch issues, pr, and discussions from the repos we could get an idea of what we are going to get before we get it. as it stands though devs are multiplying and so are the issues surrounding installed plugins.
it would just be good to see them implement something to start standardizing the products that are being made in a way that will make it easier for end users to ensure they are installing the right thing.