Hi everyone,

One of things that can get tiresome is managing your plugins and finding all the updates. To this end I have created LPC (Lotro Plugin Coordinator).
In essence, LPC is an external application that will help you find, install, update, backup, restore and delete plugins.

The key part is the updating of plugins. The current Lotro plugins format is pretty bare bones and does not help you in this regard. So for lack of anything better I have created something called an .lpc file. It is a simple XML file that describes what is in a .7z or .zip archive and any dependencies it may need. An archive may contain plugins or libraries of code. (A library contains a .library file which is almost the same as a .plugin file.. but no starting .lua file) An example of what I have put together is below:

Code:
<lpc version="4.0" name='HeroPlugins' archiveuri="http://lpc.grimblingandgrambling.com/Hero/Hero4a/Hero.7z" lpcuri="http://lpc.grimblingandgrambling.com/Hero/Hero4a/Hero.lpc" homepage="http://lpc.grimblingandgrambling.com/hero.htm">
<plugin name="HeroPlugin1" version="4.0" author="Hero" about="Hero Plugin1. The first Hero plugin!" />
<plugin name="HeroPlugin2" version="3.0" author="Hero" about="Hero Plugin2. The second Hero plugin!" />
<library name="HeroLibrary1" version="2.0" about="Hero Library1. The first library from Hero!" />
<depends name="HeroLibrary2" version="1.0" lpcuri="http://lpc.grimblingandgrambling.com/Hero/Hero4b/Hero.lpc"/>
</lpc>
In this case it essentially tells us that the 'Hero.7z' archive contains 2 plugins and a library, and an external dependency on another library.When a plugin is to be updated it fetches the .lpc given by lpcuri and checks versions.

Although it would be good if the developer of a plugin creates a .lpc file, there is no reason that it cannot be done by any site that hosts plugins.

What do people think? I would love to get some feedback and suggestions for improvements.

You can get LPC at http://lpc.grimblingandgrambling.com/

There are also screenshots, examples and further documentation on things.

Although ultimately this is aimed at the general user of Lotro plugins, I would prefer that at this stage only people who are familiar with manually installing plugins try it out. And as a precaution perform a backup of your plugins (This can be done in LPC)

Thanks

NOTE: my normal forum id is Toot, but thanks to the new forums I am one of those people who have lost their id.