* Dependencies are an issue for some of the stuff I'm installing. It would be a good thing if the .install could detect that a needed module was not present, and in that case, put up an error message and refuse to install. Is there a mechanism to do this currently?
Based on code Chad (hunmunk) posted, I've drafted a Dependencies module, http://drupal.org/node/57071, that tests for dependencies and doesn't allow modules to be installed if their dependencies are missing. You could include a _dependencies() hook, e.g. modulename_dependencies() { return array('module1', 'module2'); } Of course, that will work only if a site has the Dependencies module installed and enabled. Or else feel free to just add your dependencies to the default array in the dependencies/dependencies.module (this goes for any other module developer). Robert Douglass suggested, and I concur, that it woud be useful to distinguish between hard and soft dependencies, but I haven't yet incorporated his suggestion into the module. Nedjo