What's the deal with mcmod.info (some technical questions)

[CosmicDan]

Unsure if this belongs here but *shrug*

 

I have a few questions/confusion about mcmod.info and can't find any recent documentation on these particular things.

 

I know that the purpose of it is to provide metadata on a particular mod entry, but specific questions are:

 

1) Why do we even have it when we can just specify all of these in our main class @Mod annotation? Is it just to make things easier for FML and Modders?

 

2) What's the significance of having two version fields? The one in the mcmod.info metadata appears as the first version string in the "Mods" menu, whereas the one in the @Mod annotation appears after it in parenthesis. I'm *guessing* the former is designed to be numerical, whereas the later is a string representation (e.g. "Release", or "Alpha", etc.) but I want to be sure. Personally I'd like to only use one, but if I leave the @Mod one empty then it leaves the () there and it just looks dodgy. EDIT: Oh and then *thirdly* we have version property in build.gradle too... but I realized that this is only what's used in the jar filename.

 

3) Lastly, why are "version" and "mcversion" fields in the metadata formatted as variables by default, but don't even work?

 

These might seem like pedantic questions, but the reason I ask is because I'm working on a script that automatically manages Mod versioning and builds changelogs based on Git commit messages, and other things of the sort.

 

Thanks.

[LexManos]

0) https://github.com/MinecraftForge/FML/wiki/FML-mod-information-file

1) Launchers, web sites, anything not written in java, or anything that doesnt want to execute abritrary code to get your info.

2) They should be identical. Unless you're derping something up.

3) The replacement should be in the default build.gradle shipped with the source, if you change it then you need to change the info file.

[CosmicDan]

Great, that clears that up. Thanks for your time!