Author: Mikero
All Mikero tools 'behave', install, and operate in an identical manner. You are strongly advised to read the General Readme once.
PboDeps is a dependency lister of required addons in the config(s) of pbo(s).
The need for this program has come about due to the arrival of Arma3.
Using your addons in the a3 engine is (of course) a multi step process.
But the beginnings of it all is to place your addon in the a3 environment (eg -mod= on the command line)
Your addon almost inevitably relies on other addons to do it's thing. eg common default textures (paa) and materials (rvmat).
The only clue you will get about which specific pbo's you will need, is when the arma3 engine tells you it is missing CAAir_BAF_CH_47F (eg).
Discovering which pbo, contains CAAir_BAF_CH_47F can be a frustrating exercise.
pboDeps is intended as a one off requirement to preserve a historical record of the relationship between dependencies, class names and pbos.
The output is written to file and is formatted for easy import to an excel spreadsheet. From which, you can organise the data multiple ways, by classname, by pbo, by dependency.
This then becomes a permanent fast reference for you in looking up which collection of pbos you need to add to the arma3 environment..
While it would also be a one off exercise for this tool to simply list (and publish to website) the official bis addons (common and expansions), it's usefulness is also being able to list popular oem addons or even full mods, and discovering the requirements.
Samples:
the dependency lists for arma2, arrowhead and combined ops are provided as a convenience and example of what-to-expect
Note very carefully, that combined ops over-rides the pbo's in the common folder of arrowhead with those of the genuine a2 pbo's. The dependencies are different.
A no nonsense auto installer saving you sweat and tears.
Do not run this, or any tool from bis, as administrator.
'Admin' is not what you think it is, it is an alias for 'Microsoft Office Use only'.
Consider yourself warned.
Grab the self installers for these here
Drag n drop the folder of interest onto this exe, or, alternatively in a dos prompt
pboDeps.exe [-options] NameOfFolderContainingPbos
Options are case insensitive.
-P | Don't pauseOutput -> NameOfFolderContainingPbos.txt
Example:
You can interrogate one or many pbo's at the same time. Their location is of no consequence. For the purpose of this tool, you can create a collection of pbo's into a temp folder and simply process that folder.
Output:
| Pbo | Addon | RequiredAddons |
|---|---|---|
| air3.pbo | CAAir3 | CAAir |
| CAAir3_Su34 |
This output shows the result of actually containing a child pbo within the same pbo.
Technical notes: