Is there a way to replace my addon by another one

Anki Add-ons
1

Is there a way, for an add-on, to easily install another addon and remove itself? That’s two feature I’d love to have as backend operation. But as far as i undersatnd the code I read, this is done through code in the addons view, which I can’t easily access through my add-on. At least not without opening the add-on manager and calling its method, which seems not a great user experience.

The context for this need. I’ve an add-on that I won’t update. It’s been broken for more than a year. HSSM created a new version that seems great. I’ve not yet tried in details. I want my add-on to install HSSM version and uninstall itself.

I’d have gladly given ownership of my add-on to HSSM. I know we can do it and did it many time those past years. But now that two add-on numbers exists, I don’t think that this is relevant anymore.

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I did consider asking you about it but since it ended up being a complete rewrite I felt it would be better to start with a clean slate. I can’t be bothered dealing with version numbers and documenting its history or whatever. I don’t think anyone still has it installed to benefit from the automatic update notification anyway.

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In my case my add-ons that I no longer develop simply show a popup and direct users to the new add-ons. (e.g. I repaired a broken old add-on, then the author restarted the activity, so I no longer need the repaired version.)
like this:

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Or put the patch in add-on and instruct users on the procedure:

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I do not delete the old add-on. In my opinion it is beneficial for users and developers to keep old add-ons rather than delete them, e.g.

  1. In the future a new add-on may break and the author of the old original add-on may restart development. If so, if users have a lot of broken add-ons it is more likely that any one of them will work.

  2. Some users still prefer the old Anki, they need the old add-ons. If so no update is needed. e.g. Anki 2.1.35 is very old but still popular from language learning because Migaku’s add-ons are free.

  3. Maybe for some users security is more important than convenience. If the user trusts the author of the original add-on auto changing the author may confuse the user.

  4. The code of old add-ons is helpful for new developers to develop new add-ons. e.g. developers can compare a broken add-on with a new add-on to find out how it was repaired.

2 Likes
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A pop-up to the user is probably the best approach, as the user needs to be notified in any case, or it risks confusing them.

1 Like