This tutorial lists what you need to know to update your mods to Loader 0.4.x (and beyond!?).

The schema has changed somewhat. Throughout 0.4.x, the schemaVersion 0 will be supported, but no such promises are made for 0.5.x and beyond.

Useful sources:

• fabric.mod.json format
• Example mod, which should be updated by now (update commit)

There has been a lot of confusion about what nested JARs are meant to be used for.

Nested JARs are:

• a solution to provide dependencies which are in the form of Fabric mods, allowing the loader to pick the best version matching a given modpack's sets of dependencies,
• a solution that allows you turning libraries into Fabric mods and avoiding conflicts where they are not cleanly shadowable or where there is good reason for a Fabric mod developer to be the authoritative versioning source,
• a potential solution to cleanly package subprojects/submodules of a mod in one “combined” JAR, while also allowing using them separately.

Nested JARs are not:

• meant to be used on non-mod Java libraries,
• always the best solution for libraries which can be safely shadowed under a different package. Keep in mind that a Fabric mod ID can only exist once, meaning that potential version conflicts could prevent a pack from loading - shadowed libraries do not have this problem.

In doubt, refer to this helpful chart:

• If your mod is using plugin-loader, please abandon it and adopt the entrypoints system instead.