Information on Mod development

As someone new to D&D and a developer, I'm looking at mods that can help my DMs. I've noticed in the forums that multiple mods require minor updates, and those updates often end up as code only visible if you find the right post here. There are also some features/options that DM want for their games, and those updates, too, only end up here in a forum post. Has anyone considered using something like GitHub Issues or Shortcut to create tickets to help maintain the codebase? I am also interested in whether there is a list of mods with the number of installations (how active they are) and their last update dates? I hope to try to make time to update some mods in my spare time, and having a priority list based on a mod's popularity would be useful. Thanks, Steve.

There is a repo of scripts . It's where the scripts that are available in the one click install drop down come from. There are a number of reasons why a script might not be in the repo though. The script might be in development still with just a first "test this out" release, or the script author might not be a programmer naturally and sees Github and decides not to learn how to use it, or they may not want to publish the script under MIT license (which the repo requires). As for the issue tracker, a lot of those same issues apply, but the unsure of github one probably applies even more. A lot of users don't even know github exists, so getting them to report issues on scripts there is nearly impossible; and the R20 forums/reddit/discord are where most of the community is for announcing new scripts and sharing information on them. And then there's the fact that the api script repo has 1000's of individual scripts, which makes tracking issues for each individual script very difficult. There are several community members that use personal github repos for tracking and maintaining their scripts and only use the r20 repo as the release target instead of the maintenance repo.

FWIW, I have published about 39 scripts, but only 22 are in the repo (I might be off, but that's close). The other 17 I tend to call Scriptlets. There are several possible reasons these might not go in the repo: They are too specialized. I.e. they only solve one specific problem and it's not a problem that most people have. Related: They were written to help someone else solve a problem more or less unique to their game  They require configuration by editing the actual code. In other words, I've never set up an in-game way to set a config value. They are buggy. They largely work, but I don't have the time or resources to polish them, and not enough interest was expressed when I published to warrant cleanup. In the case of other folks, they may also have tried the Github route years ago, and been intimidated. Updating an upstream link is soooo much simpler than when I started out.  It's good practice to put these in the wiki, though, since folks can search for these specialized or uncelebrated works. It's also good practice to include [Script] or [Scriptlet] in the thread title here on the forum. The forum search is worse than useless, but a site-based google search can find such threads handily. I final good practice is that if the forum thread for your script auto closes, and you want to start a new one, edit the old one to put a link to the new one in the top post, and if you can, that last or latest post. that will cue future readers on how to look for updates.

Scott C. said: There is a repo of scripts . It's where the scripts that are available in the one click install drop down come from. There are a number of reasons why a script might not be in the repo though. The script might be in development still with just a first "test this out" release, or the script author might not be a programmer naturally and sees Github and decides not to learn how to use it, or they may not want to publish the script under MIT license (which the repo requires). As for the issue tracker, a lot of those same issues apply, but the unsure of github one probably applies even more. A lot of users don't even know github exists, so getting them to report issues on scripts there is nearly impossible; and the R20 forums/reddit/discord are where most of the community is for announcing new scripts and sharing information on them. And then there's the fact that the api script repo has 1000's of individual scripts, which makes tracking issues for each individual script very difficult. There are several community members that use personal github repos for tracking and maintaining their scripts and only use the r20 repo as the release target instead of the maintenance repo. Yeah, I get that. On GitHub, repo permissions require anyone to fork their own repo and then manage the release via a PR. The repo would have to add devs to the org and assign permissions to limit merging into the master branch, so things are managed in one place. But I understand why it has been set up the way it has. But if there are any lists of mods that require attention that are widely used, it would be good to know - I can then see if I can help give them a bit of time where possible.

keithcurtis said: FWIW, I have published about 39 scripts, but only 22 are in the repo (I might be off, but that's close). The other 17 I tend to call Scriptlets. There are several possible reasons these might not go in the repo: They are too specialized. I.e. they only solve one specific problem and it's not a problem that most people have. Related: They were written to help someone else solve a problem more or less unique to their game  They require configuration by editing the actual code. In other words, I've never set up an in-game way to set a config value. They are buggy. They largely work, but I don't have the time or resources to polish them, and not enough interest was expressed when I published to warrant cleanup. In the case of other folks, they may also have tried the Github route years ago, and been intimidated. Updating an upstream link is soooo much simpler than when I started out.  It's good practice to put these in the wiki, though, since folks can search for these specialized or uncelebrated works. It's also good practice to include [Script] or [Scriptlet] in the thread title here on the forum. The forum search is worse than useless, but a site-based google search can find such threads handily. I final good practice is that if the forum thread for your script auto closes, and you want to start a new one, edit the old one to put a link to the new one in the top post, and if you can, that last or latest post. that will cue future readers on how to look for updates. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind regarding forum etiquette.