[Taninor]

So curse client is borked and won't work right for me and here's too much controversy regarding wowmatrix. I'm in need of a new updater and I'm just wondering what you guys use to keep your addons up to date.

[Roana]

At the moment, I'm doing things manually. However, I also use a version control system for my addons in case I screw things up (well, I did that either way, but it's more important with manual updates).

[Splurk]

what's up with wowmatrix? i used it prehack, and have reinstalled it yet, should i not?

[Edgar]

I rarely update but I do have Curse client on my computer.

[Bodasafa]

I use the curse client, pre wrath and currently with zero problem and zero hack issues. I love it.

[Satrina]

One basic problem with wowmatrix is a moral one. The wowmatrix client has ads embedded in it, which make wowmatrix money. What the client does is initiate a direct download of each addon from curse/wowinterface/whatever to your machine. Wowmatrix gets money, the hosting site gets its bandwitdh leeched, and host site gets no revenue for this. A common argument is "well I use adblock so even if I go to curse or wowinterface they aren't getting ad revenue from me". That's a pretty disingenuous argument since the number of uses who use something like adblocker is pretty low over the number of users total. Ultimately, whether you care about the addon site's revenue stream is up to you, but it would really suck if they went away, no?

There's an argument that wowmatrix is breaking laws by leeching bandwidth and profiting by it, but there's no clear precedent either way to point to at this time to say yes or no.

Another basic problem is that not all licensing schemes are the same. All of my addons use the GNU Public License, so anyone is free to copy and distribute however they like, no problem. Not everyone uses that license, though. Wowmatrix is breaking copyrights all over the place for quite many authors, and there are many accounts of authors asking wowmatrix to remove their addons but are ignored. They aren't very ethical.

I hate wowmatrix because they do not, nor do they care to, distinguish between anything. If I put a beta version of SBF up, sometimes it gets updated several times in a day. These guys do an update once a day at the fastest, possibly even slower than that. When I am in a development cycle, wowmatrix users get the broken build from a link to wowinterface that is very old (comparatively) in the wowmatrix database. There are probably 3-4 new releases since wowmatrix last scanned but these people get the old and busted one. Most people don't even understand the concept of a beta test; they just see a higher version number and get that. As a result, I get easily 3-4 times the amount of email I should, telling me about the grievous errors they are getting - that I have already fixed. Even better is the abuse emails about omg you suck how could you release an addon in that state? Asshats. So yeah, I despise wowmatrix too.

In the end, convenience sells and people use wowmatrix because it is undeniably convenient. Whether you care about the various issues is up to you. Honestly, though: You do not need to update every day. Or even every week. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Caulle]

I have used WoWMatrix, but I have to agree with Satrina. The Curse client is just horrid, slow and dumb. It doesn't remove addons properly so I always end up doing them by hand. Sometimes even after I have removed them it still tells me the addon is installed. Even rebooting the program doesn't always solve the problem. I have used the Curse client to uninstall addons, and generally that will just remove the addon from its list and not my interface folder. I would honestly rather check my 50 addons one by one for updates than to use the Curse client.

It's a shame WoWAce didn't get their act together a bit more as their updater is still to this day the best one I've ever used.

You do not need to update every day. Or even every week. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This.

[Satrina]

Well, there were some pretty simple reasons for WoWAce updater going away. Kaelten was paying for the WoWAce site out of his own pocket (more or less). WAU was a project that Sylvanas whipped up, which being as good as it was exponentially increased the bandwidth bills (and got people into the habit of daily updates from a working code repository, but that's different story). Fair enough, Kaelten could have gone to a donations drive sort of thing, but Kaelten is also employed by Curse, so there you go. When WoWAce got rolled into Curse, they changed the architecture of the code repository system to allow much more author flexibility, but it also broke WAU

I figure they should have just gotten Sylvanas to write the Curse updater and that would have fixed it all up.

[Warwench]

Part of the problem is so many competing sites for addons, they do the community a major disservice. I wish they'd all get together and work out how to give everyone a slice of the pie.

I use Curse, not because I like it, but because it works (sort of some of the times).. its a sucky sucky client though and I really wish we could get the old WoWAceUpdater back.

In my opinion when they werg'd.. WoWAce was the better system, Curse should have adopted it, including the updater.

[jettzypher]

manual ftw. that way i always know what im getting and that is installed properly...

[Kadomi]

I'm also doing manual updates. I get all my addons either from wowinterface or wowace, using subscription e-mails to notify me of updates. I haven't tried the Curse Client, because I haven't heard anything good about it at all, and refuse to use Wowmatrix for all the reasons Satrina listed. Furthermore, I think it's a matter of respect towards the authors who invest their time into making cool, free stuff for the community, so I am using the sites they chose to distribute their addons on.

I use a lot of addons, so I made myself a spreadsheet with addon links and my current version, and every so often I'll click and compare and update. A bit more tedious than using an updater, but it also lets me read change logs and such.

[tobarstep]

I update some stuff manually. Most of my addons though now come from WowInterface (for the simple reason that I hate the Curse web site) and I use their updater. It's a little clunky, and sometimes won't update if the author has changed the directory structure of the addon (seems to be happening a lot lately with Aloft). Other than that, it serves my purposes well.

[Xav]

Ever since WoWace died I've done everything manually. I update only when something breaks, which is rare, or if I'm fed up with a mod's (non)functionality

[kolben]

I just get everything manually when needed from the source, wowace.com, wowinterface. I'm not a curse fan, partly because you have to use google to find any mods on their site and they carry too many old/broken ones.