Code loading priority help

[Rilgamon]

Put the main part of your addon into a initialize function. Call this when ADDON_LOADED fires.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Caellian How can i delay my entire UI to load only once ADDON_LOADED has fired, delay a block of code is fine, but an entire UI ?

This is (one of many places) where splitting up your megalithic conglomo-mod into multiple independent addons would be useful, but you can still delay all your loading stuff until your "addon" has actually finished loading. The easiest way is probably going to be to centralize it. Add a table to your addon's namespace to hold all the loading functions, in whichever file loads first:

local ADDON_NAME, addonNamespace = ...
addonName.loadFuncs = {}

Then in each other file, take all the code you're currently running in the main chunk, and wrap it in a function:

local ADDON_NAME, addonNamespace = ...

local function InitializeThisModule()
-- Do the stuff here
end

Then insert that function into the table you created:

tinsert(addonNamespace.loadFuncs, InitializeThisModule)

Finally, go back to the first file, and set up an event handler to wait for ADDON_LOADED and call all the loading functions when it fires:

local eventFrame = CreateFrame("Frame")
eventFrame:RegisterEvent("ADDON_LOADED")
eventFrame:SetScript("OnEvent", function(self, event, addon)
    if addon == ADDON_NAME then
        -- Call all the functions, in the order they were defined:
        for i = 1, #addonNamespace.loadFuncs do
              addonNamespace.loadFuncs[i]()
        end
        -- Remove all the functions so they can't be accidentally called again:
        wipe(addonNamespace.loadFuncs)
        -- Stop listening for more events since we're done:
        self:UnregisterEvent(event)
    end
end)

[Rainrider]

Or make caelLib a separate addon and your other addon dependent on it

[Phanx]

Well, once you start making parts separate addons, you should just continue that process to its logical end and avoid the conglomo-mod situation altogether.

[Caellian]

Originally Posted by Phanx Well, once you start making parts separate addons, you should just continue that process to its logical end and avoid the conglomo-mod situation altogether.

What you're basically saying is that what i've been doing for the past week is a bad thing ?

I was better off with every addon on its own instead of all in one ?

[Rainrider]

I am also interested in why this is a bad idea. Maybe for the purpose of memory and cpu tracking, so you could evaluate efficiency, but other than that what would be the reason to make it into separate addons?

[Phanx]

Well, for one, putting your entire UI into one "addon" makes it annoying to maintain. You can't isolate parts to debug problems, for example. It also leads to sloppy coding, such as inter-dependencies (where something in File A depends on something in File B, but something else in File B depends on something in File A), whereas having each discrete part its own addon forces you to use scoping correctly. I believe this is one of the issues you're running into right now.

For another, it sucks for your users. Go look at most any popular "all in one" UI's comments, and you'll find people asking how they can use just the unit frames, or just the buff mod, or just some other part by itself. By shoving everything together, you're forcing users to use 500 features just to get the 5 they want. There's no good reason your unit frames should depend on your action bars, or vice versa, so you should just make each of those things their own addon, so they can be used independently. Having a central "core" that each of the other addons depends on is fine.

[Torhal]

There are some examples of where this falls flat, as well: Cartographer was one such monolithic beast, which slowly died due to various pieces breaking one by one. Until Rythal took Carbonite over, it suffered the same fate. He has slowly been moving its functionality out to individual modules to ease maintenance and allow people to only use the portions they want.