Plugins + Scripts VaM Backstage - VAR Package Manager

[poma]

poma submitted a new resource:

VaM Backstage - VAR Package Manager - Manage your packages and dependencies

A desktop app for managing .var packages. Scans your library, builds a dependency graph, and separates content you actually installed from content that's only there because something depends on it; it then hides the clutter from VaM's content browser automatically. Browse your library contents, search and install from the VaM Hub with full dependency resolution.

VaM treats every .var in AddonPackages/ equally. Install a scene that pulls in 40 dependency packages and suddenly your scenes...

Read more about this resource...

 

[som45oul]

This looks super promising. Here's what I think is missing from most solutions like this:

1. Collections:
- The ability to create content Collections, and for content to appear in multiple collections

2. Virtual VAM
- The ability to create (with hardlinks/symlinks) a "virtual" install with just the items in the Collection
- I've done this with scripts and such, and it works beautifully - VAM is FAST and loads much quicker

3. Cleanup:
- The ability to identify and remove outdated packages (i.e. where they are no longer referenced via either .latest or .version)
- Broken or invalid packages

If you can add some or all of these features, you'll have a killer app.

Keep up the great work, and thanks for sharing!

 

[poma]

For dynamic .var hot loading, a plugin approach would work much better as it can see what you are going to load and dynamically pull into the active library. An external app can never be that good so I didn't even try. AFAIK BrowserAssist is pretty good at this.

Update: on cleanup section - Backstage can do that! It has initial and extended integrity scan to detect broken packages (checks zip header and file checksums), can detect and install missing dependencies, can detect and clean orphaned dependencies.

Update2: on collections - isn't it basically solved by custom tags? You could assign "collection name" as tag to content and then filter by it. Backstage doesn't support them yet, but many other apps do, and I think I can implement it as well at some point.

 

[poma]

This is initial release so I would very appreciate any thoughts and feedback about this app from everyone