Minecraft:Al version

Template:Exclusive Template:Outdated feature

al_version (AppletLoader version), saved on disc as version, is a number formerly used in versions as a caching identifier, to uniquely identify .jar files to be cached.

It is needed because the game used to be hosted on Minecraft:Minecraft.net as an applet. The al_version value was used to tell the LWJGL AppletLoader when to clear its cache so LWJGL and Minecraft:clientjars could be updated automatically.

Usage

al_version is a number given as a parameter to the LWJGL AppletLoader in the HTML code of Minecraft:minecraft.net/play.jsp.<ref>Minecraft.net/play.jsp (source) – Wayback Machine, May 25, 2009. "<param name="al_version" value="5.17">".</ref> It is used to specify a unique version for each jar file to cache them for re-use. (To save on downloads, the site would used a cached version on disc if the game is marked as being the same as the last time it was downloaded.) If the stored al_version matches the latest jar files, those jar files are re-used; otherwise the previously saved jars are removed from the cache and new ones are downloaded.

From Classic through most of Infdev, the al_version was a positive floating point number. Starting from Minecraft:Infdev 20100629, al_version proper was no longer used, however a caching ID still remained, taking the form of the current timestamp of the version's release.

Storage location

The al_version may be found in the HTML of the game's web applet, as <param name="al_version" value="[al_version_id]" />

In Classic through Infdev, the al_version may be found on disc in the temporary directory as version. The path differs based on the URL of the web applet being used:

%temp%/Minecraft/
%temp%/www.minecraft.net/Minecraft/
%temp%/minecraft.net/Minecraft/
%temp%/www.minecraft.net/Minecraft_creeper_test/
%temp%/minecraft.net/Minecraft_creeper_test/
%temp%/www.minecraft.net/Minecraft_sneakpeek/
%temp%/minecraft.net/Minecraft_sneakpeek/
%temp%/www.minecraft.net/Minecraft_infdev/
%temp%/minecraft.net/Minecraft_infdev/
%temp%/www.minecraft.net/Minecraft_game/
%temp%/minecraft.net/Minecraft_game/

Starting from Infdev 20100629, with the change from float al_version to a timestamped cache ID, it is now located on disc at %appdata%/.minecraft/bin/ (used by www.minecraft.net/game/ and the offline launcher).