(if you're impatient and won't read this message ;) please comment here: http://drupal.org/node/94154 -- "module page could say if new releases are available"). one of the many benefits of the new release system is that contrib maintainers can now make an official release when they think their users should upgrade. this is particularly important for security fixes. my goal is for the admin/build/modules page to tell you if you're running out-of-date code. project.module just has to provide an RSS feed for new release nodes and/or an XML-RPC interface so that something on the modules page can either display the aggregated feed items in a block, or the UI could directly display the needs-update info. for example, you visit your modules page and the row for one of your installed contribs is now bright red with a giant warning: "SECURITY UPDATE RELEASED FOR THIS VERSION, YOU ARE URGED TO UPGRADE IMMEDIATELY" wouldn't that be slick? ;) my goal is to get this into core someday. it's too late in 5.x for that. however, since the modules page is all happy FAPI, we could do this via a form_alter()'ing contrib for 5.x and see that eventually migrate into core in 6.x or beyond. why am i asking for comments? there needs to be some more data in the .info files for 5.x modules if a contrib is going to be able to do this properly. as of today, the packaging script on drupal.org that creates the downloadable tarballs will automatically append the version of your module into the .info files[1]. this is b/c the modules page in core is about to be enhanced to display this data[2]. however, just knowing the version and the human-readable name of the module isn't enough for a 5.x contrib to be able to find out if your code is out of date. we also need something along the lines of: ; Project identification Project home = drupal.org Project name = views then, the soon-to-be-written check_updates.module can get this info and use it to construct the right URLs for the XML-RPC calls or to find the right RSS feed, etc. the packaging script can easily add this info automatically, but i need to finalize exactly what the fields are going to be called and what data they should really hold. i don't want to just hard-code a full URL since the project.module changes aren't done to provide the info yet, and we might change our mind on exactly the right path to use (and XML-RPC vs. RSS, etc). also, we can't assume *every* module installed on your site is from drupal.org, since that would break things for 3rd-party modules or custom-built ones. in that case, "Project home" should point to something else, or not exist at all. similarly, using a "Project name" instead of a "Project nid" is both more sane for end users to grok, and provides a level of indirection in case project nodes ever move around, get deleted and re-created, whatever. i *really* want to get this data into the .info files ASAP so that there aren't many 5.x contribs out in the wild that are missing it. however, i don't want to just unilaterally decide the fields and format of the values without any input from the rest of you. so, please comment ASAP here: http://drupal.org/node/94154 thanks! -derek [1] http://drupal.org/node/97286 "automatically insert human-readable version into .info files" [2] http://drupal.org/node/87298 "Add version info to modules page"