Managing mods

[gkreis]

I am starting to discover that upgrading GBPVR can present a challenge if you have plugins, utilities, etc. installed. Some of them require mods to configuration files, loading files, etc.

What about GBPVR providing the APIs for these developers to install and uninstall the features? This would eliminate manual installations (which scare off some folks) and it would make sure they are installed right. It could also provide a list of installed items so that one could install a fresh GBPVR and then know what needed to be installed.

Firefox/Tbird have an awesome extension and theme manager. While it could be a lot of work to get to that level, at least establishing a central location for services, etc. would be a start.

Right now, I think GBPVR might be more approachable by less technical folks if they had a way to manage the 'extensions' that so many are providing for GBPVR.

[ApexHack]

I hear that.

Being new myself, and having got basic GBPVR working good, I'm afraid of how the Plug-In installs will affect things.

I'm uncomfortable with all the little tweaks involved with each and get confused pretty quick when trying to figure out the best way to do multiple ones and the order of installation. I guess I need to just jump in and deal with the results.

Anyhoo, my newbie two cents.
Cheers

[sub]

So what I do... dont install any mods

[ApexHack]

That's sort of like saying "It's still a Porsche and gets you where you want to go, why are you worried about the valet mode being on permanently?".

[gkreis]

I believe sub, with GBPVR, has created an amazing community. When people tell others about the product, they are great word of mouth advertisers and it shows they believe in it. I told a techy friend about GBPVR, but I wouldn't encourage anyone of modest PC skills to pursue it. It is just challenging enough to get it all configured and working that it is out of their reach. When you add many of the plugins or utilities, it clearly is out of reach.

So I guess the question is what is the intended audience? Does sub want to extend the reach to a wider audience? If so, I feel it needs to have features like Firefox or Thunderbird. They let you easily, graphically manage extensions and themes and it also provides a 'safe mode' so you can rule out effects of them. I've seen some changes in the recent GBPVR versions that lean in this direction, but unless there is a way to bundle the tweaks into easily managed extensions/plugins, then it will remain a geeks domain.

Sub, wouldn't focusing on this free you from having to reach out and periodically incorporate new versions of plugins and features in the baseline install? You could also collect statistics on the most installed features so you could decide what might be a good candidate for permanent inclusion or perhaps publish the stats so newbies could decide on what enhancements they might want to look at first. This kind of interaction with the community will make it larger and more cohesive.