On 1/21/06, Adrian Rossouw <adrian@bryght.com> wrote:
Or you could skip all that and have a simple text file in the module directory that is parseable.
I don't believe there's a single good reason to have all the modules loaded just to get their descriptions.
Agreed - a text file in the module directory would definitely be a big step forward. As well as improving performance for the admin/modules page, it would also provide a concise description of the module, for inquisitive end-users installing that are installing it. I think a file with a particular extension would work well (e.g. modulename.desc - for 'description file'). But adding a .desc file for every core module would be bad - would clutter up the core /modules directory, and is not needed anyway, since there aren't that many core modules, and any decent server can cope with loading all core modules. A better solution would be to make the .desc files optional (i.e. to be encouraged for use by all contrib modules), and to keep the 'admin/modules#description' but in hook_help for core modules. When loading the admin/modules page, Drupal can first look for a .desc file for each module, and if one is not found, then load the whole module file and call hook_help. Jaza.