[development] Confused: package value of info files

[Derek Wright]

On Dec 21, 2006, at 7:53 AM, Chad Phillips -- Apartment Lines wrote:

> i think the deal is that CVS name expansion doesn't work for  
> updates?  perhaps Derek will grace us with the actual mechanics...  :)

sadly, all i know is that it seems to work best with "cvs checkout"  
and doesn't work well with "cvs update".
furthermore, if you're on HEAD, $Name$ will expand empty, so don't  
expect miracles there. ;)  to be honest, i've never used $Name$  
expansion before, but it seemed like the best fit for this particular  
case.  unfortunately, in practice, it doesn't work as nicely as i  
expected.  luckily, only a tiny minority of drupal users will notice  
or care about these failings, since the vast majority will download  
releases from d.o, and those always have perfect, accurate, human- 
readable version strings in the .info files, instead.

and, to put this concept to rest, $Revision$ is definitely *not* what  
we want, that'd be the cvs revision id for the .info file itself,  
which is utterly misleading as a "version" of your module.  it'll  
probably stay "1.1" or 1.2" basically forever...


> it might be a good idea to get something in the official doc about  
> how the name expansion works exactly, because it's certainly not  
> self-evident.  :)

/me shrugs.

i *really* don't care so much about optimizing for the straight-from- 
CVS power-users crowd.  webchick (bless her soul) provided a nice php  
snippet to pretty-ify in this case[1] if you want to try it.

bottom line: if you update directly from CVS, 95% of the time, you're  
just getting the end of some branch, which doesn't have a valid  
version anyway (since it's moving target code) and there's not really  
any good value to put in that field. :(

want a nice, real, known version string to appear on your modules  
page?  download an official release from d.o...

think it's too much of a pain to keep a site updated like that?   
write some (secure) tools to help a human admin automate the task of  
finding, downloading, and installing into place the latest copies of  
your favorite modules.  lord knows enough people have requested such  
a feature... [and please do *not* reopen that discussion in this  
thread -- search the archives for this list instead]. ;)

want to optimize the version field on your modules page when you  
update straight from CVS?  you're in a tiny minority of power users,  
and you're not the people who are most confused about what version  
you're running.  no offense, but i don't care much about your  
usability experience with this field. ;)  i'd be happy to provide  
insight and wisdom (such as i can) but otherwise, you're on your  
own.  i have far more urgent tasks to deal with [2].

cheers,
-derek

[1] http://drupal.org/node/101009#comment-178021

[2] e.g. porting project* to 5.x:
http://drupal.org/node/99759
http://drupal.org/node/103956
http://drupal.org/node/101150