[drupal-devel] Module management (was: Let's accept more interim solutions)

[Jeff Robbins]

On Apr 22, 2005, at 2:14 PM, Allie Micka wrote:
> The collection of modules wouldn't necessarily be distributed with 
> core, but represent an array of non-overlapping functionality.  Pehaps 
> this is achieved through votes or a certain level of maturity.  It is 
> just starting to get to the point where the module list is getting 
> unwieldy and it isn't clear what each is doing, so there's overlap and 
> inexperience.  The tier of "approved" modules would presumably not 
> suffer this problem, so if they do include patches to core it won't be 
> as big of a concern.

This starts to get off the "patch" topic in into the larger area of 
module management on drupal.org. It seems like Drupal's popularity is 
growing exponentially and so is module development. And with so many 
modules it's hard to tell what is what.

Speaking as a person who only discovered Drupal about 5 months ago, it 
was really hard to figure out what were the *important* modules, which 
were essentially duplicates of other outdated modules, and so on.

I've been thinking that it might be a good idea to enable some sort of 
comments for the module pages. Many developers post their module with 
only a line or two about what it does. Comments would allow users to 
post more information about the module, post links to other modules 
that have similar-but-different functionality, tips on how to use the 
module, etc. The comment system at php.net is essential for figuring 
out tips and tricks for PHP functions and it seems like we could have 
the same thing for modules.

Another step in this direction would be a module rating system, but 
there are potential flaws with that - such as a high rated module that 
*used* to be essential, but now is obsolete.

-Jeff Robbins
  jjeff