What flavo(u)r(s) of WoW are you using?

Retail

What problem are you experiencing that led to this feature request?

Currently, an install on Retail Wow includes separate databases for all 5 Classic releases. The total install size for AllTheThings is ~66MB.

What solution would you like?

Assuming that these aren't needed in retail (ie, you aren't sharding the DB by xpac as Classics are released), could the Retail fork only include the Retail DB? These Classic DBs appear to be about half of the retail addon's disk size, and would make manual addon sync faster.

Any alternatives you can think of?

• You could split the addon like DBM does, but that is annoying for users
• You could go ahead and shard out each expansion, then flag in each Classic only (I don't know how messy that gets with the various Classic releases though.)

Anything else?

No response

No, we can't do that. It's not that much data and it doesn't impact in-game performance at all to include these data modules.

ATT only loads the database for the current version, so including multiple versions in the same package doesn't create a memory bottleneck.
This is achieved by using the .toc files for each version.

However, it does increase the size of the add-on, especially if you have multiple game versions installed.

In theory, it is possible to separate the add-on database from the add-on. We could install the ATT logic as an add-on, which might be only a few hundred kB, and the database as another add-on, just like GatherMate2.
However, this requires a lot of work and is not compatible with existing processes, requiring users and developers to re-adapt.
I don't think this is a good idea at the moment unless there is broad consensus or Crieve decides to do so.

Alternatively, without changing the current process, we can distribute multiple ATT versions, with each version containing only the TOC and database for that version.
This can save hard drive space, but it will cause the distributed add-on itself to be incompatible with multiple versions.
You must distinguish between Retail and MoP Classic, which is especially troublesome if you don't use a add-on management tool.

Agreed - I'm not clear on the addon build process, but was hoping there might be flexibility. I could help with the GitHub Actions workflow bits, but I don't think that's the main blocker at the moment - more user support for 3+ discrete addons for a feature no one is really asking for.

I'm aware they're not being loaded into RAM - I know ATT works relatively hard to be lean despite the massive database size. Just trying to trim my actual addon folder down to make transfers easier. Right now, my addon folder with default 7zip compression is around 125MB, and before I started a big cleanup it had bloated to about 256MB. I may have an addon problem. :D

My AllTheThings folder is 7 GB since I use Git. The size of the addons folder really doesn't do anything to affect the performance of the game. Also there are many people that use all game flavors that benefit from having the same addon folder in one location symlinked into each of the respective game flavors. To say that no one is really using or asking for that would be false. I personally use this.

As the primary developer for all Classic flavors and Author of AllTheThings, I have absolutely no intention of mucking that up for a few megabytes of storage reduction for a handful of players that care about the size of the addon folder.

Agreed - I'm not clear on the addon build process, but was hoping there might be flexibility. I could help with the GitHub Actions workflow bits, but I don't think that's the main blocker at the moment - more user support for 3+ discrete addons for a feature no one is really asking for.

I'm aware they're not being loaded into RAM - I know ATT works relatively hard to be lean despite the massive database size. Just trying to trim my actual addon folder down to make transfers easier. Right now, my addon folder with default 7zip compression is around 125MB, and before I started a big cleanup it had bloated to about 256MB. I may have an addon problem. :D

It sounds like you frequently play WoW on different computers and need to synchronize your addon settings, which is why you need to package your addons.
However, as @DFortun81 stated, ATT has no plans to change its current distribution method.

It sounds like you frequently play WoW on different computers and need to synchronize your addon settings, which is why you need to package your addons.

Exactly. My current process is to compress with 7zip, and that gets it down to about 125MB now. I could use Curse to handle 90% of the work, but then there's TradeSkillMaster and managing WeakAuras... Like I said, I have an addon problem.

However, as @DFortun81 stated, ATT has no plans to change its current distribution method.

Completely understand. Minor bummer, but as a dev myself I fully understand not wanting to rebuild your whole process, especially without a good reason. I'd rather have a working ATT and devs with actual time to play WoW. :D

It sounds like you frequently play WoW on different computers and need to synchronize your addon settings, which is why you need to package your addons.

Exactly. My current process is to compress with 7zip, and that gets it down to about 125MB now. I could use Curse to handle 90% of the work, but then there's TradeSkillMaster and managing WeakAuras... Like I said, I have an addon problem.

However, as @DFortun81 stated, ATT has no plans to change its current distribution method.

Completely understand. Minor bummer, but as a dev myself I fully understand not wanting to rebuild your whole process, especially without a good reason. I'd rather have a working ATT and devs with actual time to play WoW. :D

If you need to sync saved variables to a different computer, might I recommend using a symlink for your WTF folder to a GitHub repository? (You'd put the local copy of the repository somewhere else, like an SSD inside of a WTF folder that is within a GitHub repo and then symlink that WTF folder into your game folder) Each time you log out you could then commit your changes and then pull your changes on the other computer.

I've also seen it done using Dropbox where you symlink a WTF folder on dropbox into your game folder.