WowMatrix

[Knobley]

If you're not using it, you should be.

http://www.wowmatrix.com/

[dRiN]

It's THE perfect tool to keep your addons up to date. Most of the addons are manually maintained by wowmatrix "productmanager", so it even does auctioneer updates from the original home site for example. And also MOBMAP, which is taken from the original hosted site and always up to date. And of course default support for the better known addon repositories.

[Knobley]

In addition to keeping your current add ons up-to-date, it also provides one-stop-shoping for other addons, in a very convenient way... downloads and installs them.

Knobley

[Drizzit]

I heard of it. But i don't trust it. Have something that downloads stuff, that doesn't sound good to me.

[Zzyzxx71]

I've been using it a while now, I haven't had any adverse effects yet.

Only downside I have to this (and this is a BIG BIG BIG one) - unlike WUU, this one doesn't BACK ANYTHING UP. If you install an addon that borks EVERYTHING, you're FUCKED.

I only run it on test first, then I update the mains... might just be easier to stick with WUU.

[Knobley]

I'm big fan of manually updating my main, then just copying the WTF folder to the ALTs...
I have me a batch file that copies my main to my alts once I'm happy with things. I don't think WoWMatrix touches the wtf folders... just the interface/addons folder.

Zzyzxx gives good advice in that, if one of your beloved addons is borked by an update, it's nice to revert it. I'm pretty paranoid about constantly backing up my addons folder, as it's happened to me before.

Knobley

[Knobley]

I heard of it. But i don't trust it. Have something that downloads stuff, that doesn't sound good to me.
I understand where you're coming from. For me, that's actually why I like wow matrix. I believe it only uses the more commonly trusted locations for grabbing addons. I won't grab any add-on that's not supported by wow-matrix, becuse... I don't trust them.

Knobley

[Coltimar]

I've used curse for this same automation. The trouble is not all mods are going to be monitored. For example, I had a fan posting of ItemRack that worked. I used the automation and it gave me the newer version of the original ItemRack, and it doesn't work :/

Hand picking is the most effective, if you have many mods.

[Zzyzxx71]

For those of you who may not know what I'm referring to when I say "WUU" - I present WUU ('http://wuu.vagabonds.info/menu.php') - It's not as elegant as Wowmatrix, and takes a little more setup, but it does backups.

It does have drawbacks, as you can't switch wow folders easily.

[Knobley]

I've made it a point to make sure I can play 100% without any addons / mods / etc. Plain vanilla WoW. Addons are nice fro sure, but I don't want to be dependant on any of them, because there is no telling when Blizzard will randomly break them.

I think that's wise. My addons are either cosmetic(Pitbull/Bartender), informational(recount/omen), or convenience oriented (QuestHelper, Auctioneer).

It was Auctioneer that hosed me once. I don't recall the exact details, but after pulling an update, I could hardly move arounrd... totally hosed my framerate. It wasn't a fault of wow-matrix... I would have been just as hosed had done a hand-picked install of that auctioneer update. The tough part was trying to figure out what the problem was. Since then I've only had auctioneer activated on my mules.

None of my addons are mission critical and I can turn them off with little problem. Probably my biggest dependency right now is is bartender. If I turn it off, I have to adjust my keyboard assignments from bartender bars to blizzard bars, and that's a bit of a drag.

[Knobley]

...but it does backups.

By this do you mean it meerly backs up the addons folder before pulling updates?

It occurs to me that it would be trivial to do that in a batch file that backs up the addons folder and then calls wow-matrix. Just a thought.

Knobley