Modding Ecosystem

[Tartarus6]

I'm loving how the community is coming together to create mods for these devices, and it's awesome that the work I did is helping.

Problem

But there's one big issue with the modding as it is now, the mods are completely fragmented. Each mod is a full system image, so they cant be combined. And mods have to be built for each new device, and rebuilt from scratch for each new firmware release.

I think that one thing that could help hugely would be to make a modding ecosystem. So mods can be combined together and built for different systems much more easily.

I think this could be achieved by having each mod be some sort of "diff". So to combine mods, you just apply the "diffs" from both mods. This would also allow building mods for different systems, by just applying the diffs to a different starting firmware. The unpacking and repacking scripts that I've helped develop should be a decent portion of the work needed.

If we could build some kind of "mod loader" like exists for games, I think we could end up with a much more versatile system.

Question

Does anybody have ideas on how this could be built out, and how it might actually work to write mods as just themselves rather than a full new firmware? Additionally, how might compatibility between mods/devices be handled?

[Jungledede]

Disclaimer: I did not check the code, nor the architectures.

What is needed remind me of any app that is not monolith app.

You need plugging / package.

Like one is the drivers, the core firmware, then you can have the app, the Bluetooth stack, the codec, the language pack, the XX idea, the games, the I don't know

With modular system, you can combine different app to fit your device and usage

You can easily merge dev / code as things like the payer, or at least the ui can be common

It can allow also to Dev more app than the device can run and the user know it goes a limit on what can be put.

Worth to look at is rock box. I don't think they redo all from scratch for each devices and they have lot of different devices

[Tartarus6]

Yeah, I think that splitting mods into categories like drivers, core app, etc. is a good idea. That would help with managing compatibilities between mods.

[bidhata]

Fully agree. 1.7 is going to be released for Hiby R1. Will try to convert the patches into diff which presently applied manually. Presently whatever I did or can be done, is there in README format in my repo https://github.com/bidhata/Hiby-R1-Mod

[Tartarus6]

With a diff system I think compatibility could be somewhat handled on a per-case basis. It should be possible to check if mods conflict by just seeing if they modify any of the same files.

It is a bit more complex than that in some cases, like changing certain files can affect how other files are handled. But I think that can get us a good portion of the way there.