Updating mods shouldn't make them incompatible

[Therenas]

TL;DR

When updating mods through the in-game portal, prevent the updater from updating mods in a way that makes them incompatible with the current version of Factorio you are running.

What ?

When the game presents you the mods that can be updated in the in-game mod portal, it should hide/grey out those that would not work with your currently installed version of Factorio anymore. This can be the case when the mod requires a version of the base mod that is higher than the one that is installed. This is a use case that is quite common with the new release schedule for Factorio where it switches between stable and experimental versions much more frequently. It causes some users to only update to the stable versions, while modders might want to use new experimental API features.

Why ?

The way it currently is, unsuspecting users might update their mods to a version that doesn't work anymore with their version of Factorio, which is obviously annoying as they have to manually find and older compatible version of the mod on the mod portal website. The other solution for the user would be to update to an experimental release of Factorio from their stable versions, which they might not want to do, and shouldn't have to imo. It just seems like the correct thing to do, many other similar portals like the app stores on Android or iOS already work this way.

[Dev-iL]

This actually sounds like a bug...

[Therenas]

Yeah might be, I'm not super sure actually if it's intended or not, I made the pitch assuming it was, but if it isn't, then it should get fixed for sure. Maybe a dev can weigh in on this?

[PyroFire]

and shouldn't have to imo

If a mod uses a feature of factorio that doesn't exist in a previous version, it's not going to work in those previous versions.
That's why you have to and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Also i think some checks for when a mod (or any of its dependencies) are explicitly written to be incompatible with the latest version of factorio may be appropriate and simple enough, so that the incompatible mod (and all mods that depend on it and all mods are depended upon by it) don't have updates offered until you're on the right factorio version - if the entire block can't be updated, don't update anything at all.
Though i don't see much benefit to doing so - you'll be told a mod is incompatible after updating it.

[Therenas]

If a mod uses a feature of factorio that doesn't exist in a previous version, it's not going to work in those previous versions.
That's why you have to and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Yeah of course, why I meant is that a user should not have to always update to an experimental version to have their mods work. What they do have to accept is that they might not always have the newest version of the mod though.

Also i think some checks for when a mod (or any of its dependencies) are explicitly written to be incompatible with the latest version of factorio may be appropriate and simple enough, so that the incompatible mod (and all mods that depend on it and all mods are depended upon by it) don't have updates offered until you're on the right factorio version - if the entire block can't be updated, don't update anything at all.
Though i don't see much benefit to doing so - you'll be told a mod is incompatible after updating it.

Yeah exactly that is what I imagine. The benefit is that the users don't end up with incompatible mods that they have to manually downgrade so they can continue playing with them. If they are told that the mods are incompatible after the upgrade, it's already too late.

[Rseding91]

Ok, I've changed it for the next version of 0.17. It now won't install mods that have explicit base dependencies that aren't compatible with your version of the game.

[Therenas]

Nice, thanks a lot!