On Sep 14, 2006, at 8:09 AM, Larry Garfield wrote:
In all, it boils down to the need for good communication by the module author on what the status of the project is, beyond simply the existence of a tag.
for the record, the new system for releases[1] will provide more structured ways for contrib authors to communicate this information. however, the bottom line is still that the authors themselves have to be responsible enough to provide the info. the degenerate case of the new release system (if a contrib maintainer does *no* additional work to take advantage of it) will basically be what we have now (though the tarballs will be named a little differently). the bottom line is that the TRUNK version of a module (every branch has a HEAD, can we please start being specific about which "HEAD" we're talking about?) is always going to be a pain in the ass to use since the version info and potential compatibility is such a moving target. however, a big part of the problem is that because contrib authors don't have any freedom in creating branches for their modules, if they want stable and development branches for a certain version of core (e.g. 4.7) their only option currently is to make the "DRUPAL-4-7" branch the 4.7-stable branch, and TRUNK is the 4.7-dev branch. so, every contrib author can have a different policy about how they use TRUNK. some might be early adopters and port to the latest core API as it's changing. others might use TRUNK as the dev branch for the latest stable core. some might leave it that way, even after core has moved on (e.g. some TRUNK code sitting around now is probably the 4.6-dev version of some modules)... *this* part of the problem is completely addressed by the new system (again, if the author is willing to spend *any* additional effort to take advantage of it). because there will be built-in support for stable + dev branches against *all* versions of the core API, contrib authors will never have to use the TRUNK for this. we can break people of the habit of using the TRUNK versions of modules (except explicitly as testers/developers/maintainers). contrib authors could make real releases off the TRUNK (so long as the tag name matches the conventions the new system will rely on and enforce, CVS doesn't care if that tag lives on a branch or the TRUNK). however, even though these releases technically came off the TRUNK, they'd have explicit version info, including the version of core they're targeted for, so everyone would know exactly what they were and if they wanted to use them... -derek [1] http://drupal.org/node/77562 -- still in need of donations ;)