[development] LinksDB vs. Links

[Michelle Cox]

Funny that this should come up now. I was just talking about it on IRC last 
night. As a user wanting to implement links on my site, I wanted to know 
what advantage using linksDB has over CCK & views and was pointed at the one 
in CVS as well.  So now I have three things to choose from and am still not 
sure. Having multiple ways to do things can be nice but also daunting when 
you are trying to figure out what to implement.

If there is an existing module for some functionality and someone writes a 
similar module, it would be lovely if they would take a few minutes to put 
in the module description what theirs does different, why you would want to 
use one of the other, stuff like that. It doesn't have to be a fancy 
comparison chart or anything, but just a quick paragraph would do wonders to 
ease the user confusion.

MichelleC


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Eaton" <jeff at viapositiva.net>
To: <development at drupal.org>
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 1:28 PM
Subject: RE: [development] LinksDB vs. Links


> Possibly; I would be perfectly happy to see the incomplete
> administration screen just go away and call the module 'released'. It's
> a perfectly viable module and API package without that one screen, and
> just as stable as image.module, say. Branching is more of an issue.
> SysCrusher has continued to work on it, commit patches, and participate
> in issue queues over the past several weeks so I think it's more a
> question of calling the module 'done' and 'ready,' which it wasn't
> before 4.7 shipped.
>
> I suppose it's just frustrating to see people look at an existing module
> that does 95% of what's needed, and decide to reimplement from scratch
> to get the extra 5%. There are more and more cases of it every day, it
> seems. Sometimes it's unavoidable but often it's a real waste.
>
> --Jeff
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Boris Mann [mailto:boris at bryght.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 1:22 PM
> To: development at drupal.org
> Subject: Re: [development] LinksDB vs. Links
>
>
>
> On 28-Jul-06, at 9:05 AM, Jeff Eaton wrote:
>
>
> I'm not sure that's an accurate characterization. SysCrusher hasn't had
> a chance to work on the administrative screen for bulk link maint. work,
> but the module has been good to go under 4.7 for months now. It has a
> robust API, very solid views integration, and is easy to integrate with.
> The biggest problem is that 1) its description has an outdated warning,
> and 2) it hasn't been officially branched. That latter problem is
> definitely a big one, but I'd really suggest anyone considering
> implementing a links management system consider links.module and
> links.inc as their starting point.
>
> Obviously, some would prefer a smaller focused all in one solution. :)
> No problem with that. But the links package itself is definitely not in
> disrepair.
>
>
> Would neglected be a better word? 1 & 2 as you mention above are
> indicators to me that not enough attention is being paid to the bundle
> (I'm not trying to diss links, just trying to find out more about future
> direction / viability).
>
> And yes, the other big thing is the does-it-all nature...
>
> -- Boris
>
>
>