JanSharp Packages
| Name | Description | Id | Version | Updated On | Changelog |
|---|
Loading... The above list and the listing id are populated by script using the listing json itself. If you can actually read this text then something very, very most likely went wrong. Try again maybe once or twice. Press F12 and check the console if there's no error message below.
Adding Repo
If you are using the VCC (GUI), you can click here to add to VCC. (Or, if you prefer, copy the listing url to clipboard and do it manually.)
If you are using the VPM (command line tool), you can run
copy to clipboard.
Deprecated?
So with Unity pulling their installation fee stunt it's become blatantly obvious that we cannot trust Unity. I'm in a fortunate position where I do not require Unity for anything I do, except for working on these packages as a hobby and to help others. With that in mind, I've uninstalled Unity and deleted my account. Unfortunate, truly, because overall I did enjoy working on these packages and helping others create worlds. I was even in the middle of creating a lock step networking system was tons of fun.
But clearly I cannot do any of that anymore, so chances for more packages or feature updates to any of the packages are incredibly slim. They're not fully deprecated however, because I will try to the best of my ability keep their dependencies up to date and fix issues if possible.
Little Update: Well, things have changed. Since Unity 2019 does not phone home (to my knowledge at least, I could be very wrong), I can actually still use it, and it turns out I still had a version of it installed on my machine. I did not create a new Unity account. I still don't have any plans on continuing to work on these packages too much, however I did pick the lock step networking system back up because it was and is a lot of fun.
(Note that JanSharp wrote the following paragraphs, therefore the references to "I". This note mostly exists for when someone used this page as a template for their own listing. Speaking of, if you'd like to use this as a template and the same publish workflow, see VPMPublish.)
Installing, Updating and Removing
Important: I'd highly recommend to have the Unity editor closed while messing with the packages in any way. This includes not using the package resolver editor window in Unity, as you can easily get into broken states of the project where the window itself wouldn't work anymore to fix it, forcing you to close the project and do it outside anyway. Additionally, said editor window, and the VPM Package Resolver in general, is very much broken with custom VCC listings at the time of writing this (2023-07-16).
Using VCC
I've been informed that after adding a custom listing/repo the new packages may not immediately show up in the list of packages to add to a project. Something to keep in mind, I'd probably just close and reopen VCC after adding the repo.
Aside from that all I can really do is refer you to this small, mostly unrelated guide because I myself do not (and cannot) use the VCC. My hope and guess is that the GUI is self explanatory, therefore there's no need for documentation. One of the few times where there being no documentation it could actually be a good thing.
Using VPM
First of all, note that all of this was written on 2023-07-16.
Important: Make sure your current working directory is the root of the unity project
when running vpm commands which use or affect a unity project, so most of them.
Adding the listing using vpm is already explained at the top of the
page.
Adding a package to a project do vpm add package id where
id is the id from the column in the list of the packages on this page.
To update packages using vpm, it would be great if there was a way to
check for updates and just update all packages in a repository. But that doesn't exist. It
would also be great to have an "update" command to remove the current version of a package
and add a new version of it to a project. But that doesn't exist.
So what do we do? Well quite honestly, since there's no way to check for updates, best I can give you is looking at the version of the packages you have installed and comparing those versions with the versions listed on this page. You can sort by Updated On to make this easier. In order to find the version you've currently got installed, the easiest way is probably to open the built in package manager window in Unity and look at the installed packages there. (Go to Window => Package Manager => wait => top left dropdown => In Project, now you can see which packages you've installed an their version.)
Once you know if there's an update you'd like to do, you'll have to close Unity, open a
terminal in the root of the Unity project and then run vpm add package id where
id is the Id listed in the list of packages on this page. If you're updating a package that
isn't on this listing, like an official package, you can see the id ("Name") of the package
also in the package manager. Just click on it in the list and see the Name field.
Alternatively you can check the folder names in the Packages folder.
If running vpm add package id didn't actually update the package, so you still
have the old version after doing so, try deleting the package's folder from the Packages
folder in the unity project and retry. If that doesn't work, try removing the package from
the vpm-manifest.json file, also in the Packages folder (make sure it's still
valid json, no trailing commas) and try again.
To remove a package, wouldn't it be nice to have a remove command? ... Anyway
navigate to the Packages folder in the Unity project and delete the folder of the package.
However the VRChat Package Resolver would prompt you that a package is missing when opening
the project again, so before opening it again open the vpm-manifest.json file,
also in the Packages folder, and in the "locked" section, find the entry for
the package you're removing and remove it. Make sure the resulting json is valid, most
notably make sure there is no trailing commas.
Installing an older version
Ha! Funny joke. Pretty much everything with VRChat is rolling release. Installing an older version is simply pain. Fun fact, at the time of writing this (2023-07-16), since the VPM Package Resolver is broken with custom VCC listings, you literally can't even clone some project and then have it install the the packages that were used. It just doesn't work. Also don't be surprised when you click on the "Show me what's missing" button when opening Unity and it doesn't open the window, and there being errors when clicking "Ok" instead. Don't bother with it, just do everything yourself.
Still here? So you actually want to install an older version. Well I can't say if it's
possible using VCC, but I'd be kind of surprised if it gave you that option. I can tell you
though that it's truly impossible using the vpm command line tool. So with "do
it yourself", I truly mean it. Download the zip file from the github release for the version
you'd like to install, unpack it and put it in the Packages folder. Then manually add it to
the vpm-manifest.json file, though honestly that's just done in the hopes of
the system getting better in the future, so we're doing it "properly". For the record, I
have not tested this, it's just what would make the most sense.
Also if you need an older version of a package that isn't on this listing and you can't find
a manual download, you can manually open the listing's json file that you used when adding
the repo (no there's no way to use vpm to list the urls of the repos), search
through that json file and use the "url" link which is a direct download link of a package.
To find the listing urls, on Linux, and probably MacOS, you can look at the folder
~/.local/share/VRChatCreatorCompanion, where there's a settings file, and other
folders with more files, like cache files and such. I'm not saying exactly how this is layed
out because chances of this changing are very high. On windows, the folder may be in AppData
or in the user directory somewhere.
Unity keeps prompting me about missing packages
Like I mentioned in the sections above, this feature is broken. It both cannot download the packages when you click "OK", nor can it open the editor window. If you're using the VCC I'm assuming you could install the packages from that GUI outside of Unity, or at the very least install the latest version of the packages if installing the version that's listed for the project doesn't work.
If you're using the vpm command line tool, then the best options you have is
running vpm add package id for each package that's installed in that project,
or manually finding the zip downloads for each version that's listed in the
vpm-manifest.json file, which you can do for the packages on this listing here
quite easily by going to the github release, but for anything else - including the official
packages - you'd have an easier time just installing the latest version than trying to find
the version that was used for that project. But if you need that specific version, see the
Installing an older version section above, near the end.
Short Apology
There is certainly some salt on this page, and I apologize for that. I hope that even with that bit of salt I was able to help you get onto the right path to fixing the issue you've encountered. I also hope that the issues that I have with the systems which I've outlined above get improved over time. It is why I keep mentioning that I wrote this on 2023-07-16.