dandels/dmodman

TUI downloader & update checker for Nexusmods.com

dmodman

dmodman is a Linux-native TUI download manager and update checker for Nexus Mods, written in Rust. It can be registered as a handler for the nxm:// protocol, allowing the "Mod manager download"-button to work on Nexus Mods.

Features

Incomplete list of existing and planned features.

• Multithreaded downloads.
• Pausing/resuming downloads.
• Restore download state on startup.
  • Unpaused downloads automatically continue if their download links are still valid.
  • Expired downloads can be resumed by re-downloading them from the Nexus.
• Sophisticated and fast (complicated and buggy) update algorithm that shouldn't have false positives like the venerable MO2.
  • Outdated files are marked with a "!" in the "Flags" column of the files view.
  • If a mod has some other new file, files are marked with a "?". (Can also be an update with broken metadata). This flag is reset when a new file from that mod is downloaded.
  • Needs more testing.
• Ignoring updates until the next time a file is updated.
• Cache responses to reduce API requests and speed up the program significantly.
• API request counter.
• hjkl-navigation for vi aficionados.
• API key generation through Nexus SSO-integration.
• Hash verification of completed downloads. This had a bug on Nexus's end, and is hopefully fixed now.
• Opening mod page in browser.
• The UI is the bare minimum needed, and could use a lot of improvements.
• Importing already downloaded files to dmodman.
• Download speed display.
• Line wrap in the error message display.
• Querying download urls without visiting the Nexus (Premium users only).
• Tomato sauce to go with the occasional spaghetti code (WIP).

Installation

• It is recommended to add "dmodman" to your PATH, either by placing the binary there, or by symlinking to a release/debug binary (target/release/dmodman and target/debug/dmodman, respectively).
• Nxm url handling requires putting the dmodman.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications and dmodman being found in PATH.
• dmodman depends on xdg-utils, as xdg-open is used for opening URLs.

Known issues

• dmodman currently only manages files that are present in the download directory, meaning that you need to pointlessly keep mod archives around in order to check updates for them. If this is an issue for you, you can replace unneeded mod archives with empty files until a fix is released.

Usage

• Only one instance of dmodman can run at the same time.
• The first time dmodman is launched, an API key is generated for the user through Nexus's single sign-on.
  • API keys are stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dmodman/apikey and can be viewed in your Nexusmods profile.
• The config file is checked for in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (~/.config/dmodman/config.toml). See the example config.toml.
  • Currently only supports configuring download location.
• Mods are downloaded to the same directory regardless of which game they belong to. This is intentional, since mod files can be compatible with multiple game editions at the same time.
  • It's recommended to change the download directory and/or profile whenever modding a different game. For example, set the profile to "morrowind" if modding Morrowind.

Building

• dmodman works with the latest stable Rust toolchain.
• git clone https://github.com/dandels/dmodman/
• cd dmodman
• cargo build --release or cargo run --release

Technical

• Nexus API reference.
• API responses are cached in $XDG_DATA_HOME/dmodman/ (defaults to ~/.local/share/dmodman).
  • There is currently no automatic cache deletion.
  • The responses in $game/file_lists are used to display data and shouldn't be deleted.
• Invoking dmodman nxm://... queues the download in the currently running instance. Other command line arguments are not supported.
• dmodman uses ratatui for the TUI.
• While the program is written with Linux in mind, OS support should mainly be limited by the termion terminal backend.
  • MacOS probably works with few modifications, but I'm unable to test it. If there is demand and contributors, it can be supported.
  • Supporting Windows is not a goal, as they already have multiple choices of mod managers. However, enabling Windows support by replacing termion with crossterm shouldn't be too hard.

Logo

NexusMods requires users to have application-specific API keys. Having a logo was a prerequisite for being featured on the NexusMods API page & getting dmodman-specific API keys via SSO. Therefore, here is a screenshot of an xterm with font size 96, using the openly licensed Space Mono font: