Issues with Extension Build Tool for Blender 4.2 and Compatibility with Blender 3.6

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Question Regarding Build Tools – I followed the instructions for blender --command extension build, and while it worked, the resulting zip file doesn’t contain a subfolder; instead, the Python files are directly in the zip.

This setup works in Blender 4.2 but fails to install in Blender 3.6 because of the missing subfolder. My add-on is compatible with both Blender 3.6 and 4.2, with the only difference being the bl_info and the manifest.toml file. The documentation isn’t clear about whether I can include both files together (it states to remove bl_info).

Since Blender 3.6 is supported until June 2025, this is a relevant concern. Do I really need to maintain two separate releases due to these minor differences? Especially considering one of them completely fails to install if the user downloads the wrong version.

To clarify, I can mix bl_info and the manifest, manually pack everything into a zip, and it works fine on both Blender 3.6 and 4.2. However, this approach doesn’t follow the guidelines, and there’s no telling what might break in the future.

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Not much will break with manual zipping. You can also build and then create subfolder inside zip it creates. You don’t need to remove bl_info it doesn’t break anything. It would be good if command line created subfolder too, but it’s probably too late to include it in next Blender version and don’t know if its worth to modify this just for couple of months. Maybe @ideasman42 has opinion