WARNING: This page contains strong language and may not be suitable for viewing by all users.
Who is Disembedding suitable for?
DISEMBEDDING IS ONLY FOR PROGRAMMERS. If you are not a programmer then you lack the skill to use it. That is the bottom line. If you cannot go into the code to fix whatever went wrong because you run disembeded then you should not be running disembedded.
What are the advantages of running my mods disembedded?
- You save a couple of seconds of load time IF everything went well.
- If you are looking at memory issues it gives you a slightly better idea of what is going on.
That is it. That is the sum total of what you accomplish. After loading Wow, there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between disembedded and embedded mods performance wise. None.
What are the hideous drawbacks of running disembedded?
- Disembedding is bad, ... M'Kay.
- All those libs that used to be inside your mods are now loaded like addons and your list of "Addons" becomes huge.
- Disembedded libs contain more files than their embeded versions and sometimes actually contain code embedded libs do not. Extra code is a big deal because that is stuff sitting around wasting your time and your computers time.
- Your startup time increases significantly if toc files do not find what they are looking for because thats how blizzard coded it. Perhaps your updater runs around and rewrites toc files for you. Perhaps this will never go hideously wrong for you. Perhaps.
- Complete and utter noobs run disembeded because they read or heard somewhere that it is kool. Then they run into errors and do not have any clue how to fix it so they post all over the place and waste everyones time.
- Mods will break simply because your libraries are now scattered all over and can be out of date, incompatible, missing or any number of other things that can go wrong. This breaking has nothing to do with the mod though, it works perfectly fine embedded. The only thing that went wrong is user error.
- Every time an included lib changes, is added or removed, some ignorant disembedded user will have an issue and come post on the forums wasting peoples time. Every Time. It does not matter if the checkin is flawless or not. Phantom errors will get reported. This is beyond outrageous.
- Letting you run embedded is catering to some silly fetish you have that is not based in reality. The support cost of your fetish dwarfs the couple of seconds you may have saved on startup or a few extra k on your hard drive. Look around. You can buy terrabyte drives now. Hard drive space is just not an issue. My entire addon folder with a ton of mods is 100MB. This is a tiny tiny fraction of just one of the hard drives in my computer.
I am convinced. How do I get the real mod?
- Follow the FAQ direction to Actually Download the LATEST version.
- Never look back.
- Or follow Seerah's Directions
I've never had any of the problems you've mentioned that I haven't been able to fix myself with no-more than 2-5 minutes effort even though disembedded I had around 250 addon folders.
But yes, there are noobs out there.
Someone needs help learning to write a position paper...
If I were actually trying to research which strategy to go with (embedded or not), I think I would take a look at this opinionated collection of half-facts and just automatically assume it's wrong. It probably is, but it's not worth arguing about because most ace addon devs are too busy at the moment trying to sort out why WoW 3.x broke their addons. It's probably not because of disembedding though.
As it is, I'm just here to see what Autobar is all about. The description of what it can do sounds pretty valuable.
It's not about drive space, it's not about memory, it's not about load time. It's about making sure you are using the correct version of the libraries, and more to the point, making sure that WoW loads the correct version. If you have multiple embedded mods using the same library, you have no control over which iteration of it loads first. If it so happens that one of your mods requires an up-to-date version, but another of your mods hasn't yet been updated to embed that version, and the older version loads first, mods will stop working. Disembedding gives you complete control over this and allows you to ensure you are using the most optimal version of the various libraries for your mod setup.
Disembedding is bad? Only if you're a complete idiot.
'Disembedding is bad? Only if you're a complete idiot'
The internet is filled with idiots