Update status module (D7)

Update (status) module is what notifies end users if there are new available releases for any of their installed modules and themes, notifies them about missing security updates, and is what provides the data used for the project usage statistics. This module is currently maintained by dww, though a co-maintainer would be greatly appreciated and welcomed! Here are most of the issues that would be really great to tackle before the D7 code freeze:

Update manager issue queues

Update manager string freeze issues
Update.module string freeze issues
All update.module issues
All Update manager issues

Note that not all parts of the Update manager are part of update.module, for example, all the code in authorize.php, includes/authorize.inc, the FileTransfer and Archive class hierarchies, etc.

D7 Update manager functionality

See #971546: [meta] Battle plan for Update Manager for more...

Existing functionality that's completely broken

#1008328: Uniqueify update-cache and update-extraction directories to prevent "Permission denied" errors
#986616: Update Manager fails when the primary module/theme for a project lives in a subdirectory
#951172: Install a module or theme from URL fails
#936686: "Installation failed" errors when installing modules from Update Manager w/ Overlay
#934300: Update status keeps trying to fetch available updates over and over for projects without a release
#647964: Running cron does not check for available updates

Major UX bugs in the workflow

#950632: Authorize.php report for update manager does not list all updated projects
#605292: propagate failure during batches in update manager
#850846: Update will happily downgrade modules unless you are careful
#961060: If a module is Not Supported, Drupal's warning links to available updates page, which says everything is OK

Issues that prevent trying to improve anything via contrib

#933392: Add tests to verify that you can plug in your own Updater class

Security and stability hardening

#932110: On some servers, the Update Manager allows administrators to directly execute arbitrary code even without the PHP module

Update status functionality

Important bug fixes

#361563: Update Notifications causes SQL Server to go away

Other tasks

#555362: Support multiple download links in the available updates report (.tar.gz + .zip packages like on drupal.org)
#238950: Meta: update.module RAM consumption
-- Split up the APIs so that more of the code processes a single project at a time, instead of everything processing the full array of projects.

New features

#197486: GHOP #65: Add "available update" indicator to installed modules
#158541: Integrate update.module with actions.module

Bug fixes that will break the string freeze

#237608: "Recommended version" for unsupported branch
#210144: If currently installed release is not found, update.module prints bogus information
#208766: Latest release from maintainer's recommended branch called "Also available", not "Recommended"
#166333: Visually display a warning if there are version mismatches within a single project