[development] Evil hack: admin/modules without memory restrictions

[Jeremy Epstein]

On 1/21/06, Adrian Rossouw <adrian at bryght.com> wrote:
> Or you could skip all that and have a simple text file in the module
> directory that is parseable.
>
> I don't believe there's a single good reason to have all the modules
> loaded just to get their descriptions.

Agreed - a text file in the module directory would definitely be a big
step forward. As well as improving performance for the admin/modules
page, it would also provide a concise description of the module, for
inquisitive end-users installing that are installing it.

I think a file with a particular extension would work well (e.g.
modulename.desc - for 'description file'). But adding a .desc file for
every core module would be bad - would clutter up the core /modules
directory, and is not needed anyway, since there aren't that many core
modules, and any decent server can cope with loading all core modules.

A better solution would be to make the .desc files optional (i.e. to
be encouraged for use by all contrib modules), and to keep the
'admin/modules#description' but in hook_help for core modules. When
loading the admin/modules page, Drupal can first look for a .desc file
for each module, and if one is not found, then load the whole module
file and call hook_help.

Jaza.