What Exactly is Solder and What is It Used For?

[saddlepiggy]

I've noticed a bunch of modpacks have solder enabled. I have no idea what it is, and if it is useful, then I would like to integrate it into my modpack. Also, if you know, please tell me how to add it! Thanks, saddlepiggy!

[CanVox]

Hi,

Solder is the technology we use to deliver our packs to the launcher, and it's open source so anyone can use it.  When you link your pack to solder, you get some new features:

• Users can see old versions and switch between versions from the modpack options menu.
• You can have separate latest & recommended builds.
• You can upload each mod version separately instead of having one huge install.  This is a lot of extra work, but this way, when users switch between versions, they only have to download the changes.  This saves them time, and you bandwidth.
• You can gather CIDs from your beta users and input them into solder, and then have "private" builds that only your beta users can see.

Solder's pretty cool, but it requires you to secure your own hosting and setting it up generally requires a certain level of expertise.  We informally provide support for Solder in #technic on SynIRC, but we generally don't provide support for people who haven't set up Laravel yet.  If you can't secure your own webhosting or the idea of setting up a PHP server yourself sounds daunting, Solder may not be for you.

If you're interested, check out solder.io for more info.