Known Aliases

Known aliases are a way to tell the Add-on Manager how to migrate old Add-ons to new Add-ons. This is important because it allows users to seamlessly upgrade their Add-ons without having to manually uninstall and reinstall them.

To define a known alias, add a known_aliases parameter to the elements section of your Add-on's .addon file. The known_aliases parameter is a list of strings, where each string represents a previous name of the add-on.

When the Add-on Manager is upgrading Add-ons, it will check the known_aliases parameter to see if the old Add-on has a known alias. If it does, the Add-on Manager will automatically display that the Add-on has an Update available. Users can keep their currently installed version or update to the newly packaged version.

Example

The following example shows how to define a known alias in an .addon file:

JSON

{
  "name": "User Tool Creator",
  ...
  "elements": [
    {
      "type":"AddOnTool",
      "identifier": "com.seeq.addon.usertoolcreator.addontool",
      "known_aliases": ["Add-on Tool Manager", "Add-on Management Tool"]
    }
  ]
}

In this example, the User Tool Creator Add-on has two known aliases: Add-on Tool Manager and Add-on Management Tool. If the user has either of these Add-ons installed, the Add-on Manager will automatically adopt the Tool and display in the Add-on Manager that the User Tool Creator Add-on has an Update available.

Important Notes

Known aliases are exact matches, but not case sensitive.
Wildcards are not allowed in known aliases.
Known aliases are only used for migrating previously installed Add-ons Tools to packaged Add-ons of type AddOnTool. They cannot be used to migrate between types.