Mod Manager - prior to TNG 10.1
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Starting with TNG V8 the Mod Manager is built into TNG.
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Purpose of the Mod Manager
The TNG Mod Manager is intended to provide a more integrated way to install/remove and manage modifications (mods) to the TNG software package using config files that have been coded to work with the mod manager.
A TNG Mod is small bit of code packaged together into a configuration file, using the file name extension .cfg, that manages all the changes of code needed to implement the particular modification. Simply unzip or extract the .cfg file into the proper Mod directory and the Mod Manager will see it is available to be installed if the file is properly coded. It takes just two clicks to install the Mod and just two clicks to uninstall it if needed. There may be instances where other small changes need to be completed either before or after the installation of the Mod, so please read the TNG Wiki article on the mod.
Enhancements Credits
| TNG version: | 9.0 |
Several enhancements were made in TNG V9 by the following TNG Users:
- Bart Degryse added the capability for the Mod Manager to recognize the Config Path when the target is one of the standard TNG configuration files
- Bart Degryse and Ken Roy removed the Clean Up button when a mod cannot be cleaned up
- Linc Haymaker replaced the deprecated POSIX regular expression thereby speeding up the processing of check status and newfile creation
- Ken Roy added message highlighting and bold text to make it easier to find errors and successful completion
- Ken Roy with key testing provided by Roger Moffat corrected the message display sequence when new files and copy files were involved
Advantages
The Mod Manager has the following advantages:
- automates the installation, removal, and management of TNG modifications
- eliminates the need to manually track TNG mods by line number, since the changes are now contained in a config file
- allows tracking stylesheet and configuration changes
Developer
The Mod Manager was developed by Brian McFadyen with testing and suggestions provided by Ken Roy. The Mod Manager is built into TNG V8.
Requirements
Folders
TNG V8 and above provides two subfolders:
- mods which are where you are expected to save the .cfg files you extract or unzip from the zip files provided on the TNG Wiki mod pages.
- The mods folder provides the input .cfg files and related subfolders for mods that contain multiple files that are copied.
- extensions where some of the mod extensions that are installed by other Mod Manager config files will be created.
- The extensions folder is an output folder used by the Mod Manager to write code snippets and other files installed by the Mod Manager. See the Add Files section in the Mod Guidelines article for examples.
NOTE even though TNG provides a folder rename capability on the full install to rename the extensions directory, please do not rename this folder at this time. Several mods have hard-coded includes for their code snippets from the extensions folder.
Custom Styles and Text
Note that some of the mod config files include changes to styles that are saved in mytngstyle and custom text that is saved in the languages/English/cust_text.php and languages/English-UTF8/cust_text.php.
The following are required for your mods to show an OK to install:
- your cust_text.php files must have a php terminating statement which is the ?> since the mod config files typically specify that line for the verify location before which in needs to insert the code
- your mytngstyle.css file must contain the TNG distributed lines (note that a line feed was inserted for readability in the text below)
/*your custom style goes in this file*/
/*if you're overriding style blocks from genstyle.css, you only need to include the attributes you're overriding, not the whole block*/
Mod Manager Status
For examples of the Mod Manager Status screens and how to interpret the various statuses, see Mod Manager - Interpreting Status
- Ready to Install
- Correctly Installed
- Cleanup Required
- Variation of the same mod will show one as requiring cleaning. You probably should delete the version you are not using to avoid confusion.**New Version of Mod will show existing mod as Installed and new one as requiring Cleanup. The correct action is to Remove the existing version, install the new version, and then delete the old version of the mod.
| TNG version: | ≤ 8.1.3 |
- Clean Up required in TNG V8 that becomes Unable to Install in TNG V9
- Bad Target indicates possible code change Mod developers should verify that the config file is coded correctly and update the code to be verified appropriately.
- Same code is modified by another mod will show as requiring Cleanup. Mod developers show attempt to fix by changing the location of one of the mods in conflict.
| TNG version: | ≥ 9.0 |
- TNG V9 removes the Clean Up button for cases where a clean up will not work and issues the Unable to install this mod message which is proceeded by another message that provides the reason why the mod cannot be installed. See Unable to Install for additional details. This includes the following cases:
- Missing Target keyword
- Missing Target file
- Bad Target
- Missing source copy file
Mod Manager TNG V7
| TNG version: | ≤ 7.1.3 |
| TNG version: | ≥ 7.1 |
Since the Mod Manager is part of TNG V8, the installation instructions have been moved to Mod Manager TNG V7.
Related Links
For Mod Developers
Other Uses of Mod Manager:
