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.
Typically, modules will only go out of date long after you install them. So, you would only notice outdated modules when you come back to admin/modules for something else. Perhaps this could be added to the status report instead. We already have an 'outreach' from the status report to /admin for critical errors and we could do something similar for out of date versions. Given that version checking can be applied not only to modules, but also themes and even core, it seems a bit out of place on the modules page as well. Plus, it allows us to present it in a simple, compact format. Some examples: ------------ Drupal 5.2 (up to date) (Checkmark icon) ------------ Drupal 5.1 (minor update available) (Error icon) A new maintenance release is available for Drupal 5.x and should be installed immediately to prevent critical security bugs. ------------ Drupal 4.7.4 (major update available) (Warning icon) A new major release of Drupal is available which includes many new features. ------------ ------------ Modules Up to date ------------ Modules Minor updates available Updates are available for the following modules: * Pirate * Views (Warning icon) ------------ Modules Major updates available A critical security fix is available for the following modules and should be installed immediately: * Hack your site.module ------------ The idea of the status report has always been that it should only present important information. Contrast this with, for example, presenting a long table of module names with a column that says "up to date" or "updates available": it forces the admin to sift through the (possibly long) list him/herself. It is much more efficient to summarize the information. Of course, an additional outreach could be added to admin/modules too, but the update information should IMO not live there. Steven Wittens