[development] how to identify "root" modules?

[Cog Rusty]

On 10/14/07, Gábor Hojtsy <gabor at hojtsy.hu> wrote:
> On 10/14/07, Cog Rusty <cog.rusty at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Why I investigated this is that I would need a stable solution to
> > > > indentify these "root" modules in each project. We know this is system
> > > > module in Drupal itself, but collecting a wired in list of "root"
> > > > modules for each module suite seems like a bad idea.
> > >
> > > You could check the dependency tree:
> > > Most to all submodules will depend on the "root" module, so you could
> > > determine that one by defining it as "the module where count(is_depended_on)
> > > is higher than for all other modules". Of course, that comparison has to be
> > > restricted to the root folder of each module collection, for which I don't
> > > have a good idea on how to reliably determine it.
> >
> > Dependencies is not such a reliable way. Independent modules can be of
> > two kinds. Either the main bare-bones module without additional bells
> > and whistles, or auxiliary utility modules which are leaves in the
> > dependencies tree. An example is the ecommerce module where there are
> > at least two modules on which others depend, "store" (which I believe
> > is the main one) and "ec_common", none of which is located in the
> > package's root.
>
> Well, I used "root" modules as the module in the given suite, which
> should always be enabled, and some of the others depend on it. In this
> sense ecommerce has two such modules: ec_common and store. The problem
> is identifying at least one of those, not to pick one from a list if
> we have more :) I don't think it is a good idea to put these modules
> actually in the module suite root, even I would advocate module suites
> to have each module in its own directory , unlike views or cck, but
> like ecomerce or ubercart. (Although this definitely needs to be
> decided on a case by case basis, having folders for each module allow
> more space for them to grow).
>
> Gabor
>

Sure, I have noticed that you have followed a similar apporach in l10n_server.

Regarding identifying them from the dependencies, another
counter-example is the privatemsg-5.x-2.x module where the
privatemsg.module depends on the included mail_edit.module (which can
be enabled independently and is also used by subscriptions-5.x-2.x).
Although in this case they are not in directories and the main one is
identifiable by its name.