[development] resolving problems with version-specific dependencies

[Derek Wright]

On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:07 PM, Oleg Terenchuk wrote:

> difficulty when you have a project with many modules but not every  
> module supports every version

While version-specific dependencies are actually hard (in spite of  
Gabor's message that the only problem is that the people who think  
this is easy don't do it), there is a possible solution that is  
relatively straight-forward.  Install profiles should be packaged up  
with everything they depend on into a single tarball.  This is a much  
more simple problem to solve than functionality in core (and on d.o)  
to handle version-specific dependencies in general.  Every profile  
just needs a file that lists the exact versions of the modules that  
should be packaged up with it.  Even if people aren't going to run  
the profile to install a new site, they could still use the tarball  
as a collection of the right versions of a bunch of modules that  
depend on each other.

Not only is this a partial solution to the version dependency  
problem, it'd be a massive usability win for install profiles.

I even started a bunch of discussions on g.d.o about exactly how this  
will work, and I'm planning to start a fund-raising campaign to raise  
sponsorship to implement it all.  My goal is to have this working on  
d.o within a month or two, but I can't yet commit to a date.

Cheers,
-Derek (dww)