This tool looks at what mods are installed (either manually, in SteamApps/common/RimWorld/Mods or via Steam workshop in SteamApps/workshop/content/294100) and topologically sorts them based on supplied dependency rules.
As mods come and go and the core game updates, keeping them automatically sorted in a working order is increasingly difficult. In most cases, updating the game also disables all mods-- losing the very ordering that took so long to get right in the first place. I found this intensely frustrating, as other games (e.g. Factorio) have their own hard and soft dependency system that automatically sorts the list. So here's a start of what that might look like in Rimworld, implemented as an external tool.
- Comments are line-based and start with
#. - Rules are subject-verb-object and end with a period (
.). - Subject and object describe what mods might match.
- Mods are identified by normalized name, and can be directly string-matched, or prefix/suffix/contains-matched.
- Strings are double-quoted.
- Subsets of mods can be composed via and/or/not clauses.
- Long lists of and/or can be composed with commas and enclosed within parentheses.
- Verb clauses may describe hard dependencies or soft dependencies.
$ rimworld-modlist-depsorter rules.txt
This project should be buildable with the Cabal packaging system for Haskell.
- Better error handling/reporting.
- Actually break softdeps on cycle detection.
- Automatic dependency discovery (e.g. for HugsLib) by examining patch XMLs and
.dlldependencies. - Support for versioned dependencies and associated (much more complex) solver.