Manage Your MODs

If you maintain several forum boards using phpBB, then you will all know the pain you get when new version comes out. You will have to upgrade the engines and also re-check the MODs that you have installed to make sure it works with the new changes. In phpBB 3, things are getting better, as the automatic updates has a diff feature which can be used to compare and merge those differences, but in some case, manual look must be done.

If the MODs has a new version or you would like to remove the MODs, then here comes another nightmare. You will have to manually edit the files changed and delete the unnecessary files. Is there any tool to help you create installation package for MODs?

The answer is there is. It's called UMIL (Unified MOD Install Library). Here's the snippet from the main website:

This utility enables MOD Authors to create simple installation scripts for their MOD that allow the user to install, update, or uninstall a modification quickly. Released under the GNU GPL license, UMIL is included within MOD Packages to make MOD Installations simple and automatic.

What are the features of UMIL?

1. Add, update, or remove configs
2. Add or remove modules
3. Add or remove permissions
4. Set or unset permission options from roles and groups
5. Add or remove database tables
6. Add, update, or remove table columns
7. Add or remove table keys/indexes
8. Purge / Refresh Caches

It's not yet released as a final version (still 1.0.0 RC2 per 29 March), but this tool will soon help administrators to manage their MODs