Module "Package' names - open for discussion
Reg - October 25, 2009 - 21:41
It would be useful to have one page somewhere where we could see all the package names used for various modules so that developers had some chance of consistency of package names.
Right now I see that most of my installed modules are under "Other", but I also get things like one under "Content display" and another under "Content displayed" or some other subtle difference that really shouldn't be there.
If developers had a list of package names along with modules under those package names we could self-organize some consistency. This could also be automated with a hook into the Drupal packaging script so that such a page was always up-to-date in accordance with the latest use of the script.
That's my 2 cents worth.
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The problem is that too many projects are misusing package names. Most modules should be under "Other". The packages are designed for large modules such as CCK that contain many submodules as a way to group them together. It's also used by other modules that are very tightly integrated to one of these modules, such as a field providing module for CCK.
Rather than make a list of all these random packages being created, maintainers should be encouraged to use them properly and end the mess.
Michelle
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I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
I see your point. I don't
I see your point. I don't know if I would agree that that is entirely true anymore because of the numbers. That is, 40, 50 or 60+ packages under "Other" is too much.
Perhaps better would be to setup a list of recommended categories, which you could take directly from the module download section, and encourage developers to use those when possible (encouragement needs a mechanism by which to work and this gives us one). Of course large projects with many modules like the CCK should be given their own category by their developers but then again they naturally get their own category under the download section anyway so they would inevitably match up.
A good example where projects may only have one module but it makes sense to put them under a common package name is "caching" modules.
This functionality I certainly want to see all in one place in my module list without ton of non-related modules scattered in between them.
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Reg | www.seowebsales.com
Not really
I'd much rather have 60 individual modules listed alphabetically under "other" than have to go hunting to figure out what package it's in. A single site usually doesn't have many modules that do the same sort of thing so you'd end up with a lot of packages. That's far more of a mess than a simple alphabetical scan.
The thing that makes packages more useful than listing all modules alphabetically is that it's often easy to forget what the small modules do and having them under, say, CCK makes it easier to see at a glance what it's for. Having, say, Advanced Forum under a "Forum" package really isn't any more useful to me than having it under "Other".
Michelle
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I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
Agreed, a lot of small
Agreed, a lot of small modules should be under other. That doesn't make it a universal truth though and a good example is admin. tools. Their are a number of modules I use that aptly put themselves under 'Administration' I wouldn't have it any other way and I suspect most people would agree. Another example is debugging tools you may install. It makes no sense what-so-ever to mix debugging/programming tools up in 'other' regardless of the number of modules involved.
Additionally, as I said before, if you give some guidance, such as a starting point by giving most categories to use, which have naturally defined themselves anyway if you look through the download section you will almost eliminate the issue of too many categories and I am sure developers will pitch in and help shape such a list. Personally I like the idea of having the packager script create a page that shows "what is" as I suspect having that resource will automatically clean things up... but that is obviously just an opinion.
Of course, if you do want an alphabetical listing, it would be trivial to have a selection for categorized or purely alphabetical listing giving the best of both worlds. However, I do not see you making all or most of the developers other than the ones you want to use packages leaving their packages to default to others. I do see it being possible to set some recommendations that other would for the most part be happy to follow and contribute to the shaping of.
I do have an issue with a listing so long that when I am tracking down, let's say a caching issue, that I remembered I installed memcache so I can look for that but not some other module so I don't even think to look for it until half a day later it I see by chance and find it's the source of my problem. Again, there is no reason why caching modules shouldn't all be under a caching package name (or perhaps a couple of very closely related names that sit next to each other alphabetically starting with the word cache of course).
In any case, making an alphabetical list is trivial, finding a known module name on a page is also trivial since your browser will do that so you don't need anything special from Drupal. However, with large numbers of modules as is more often case now (100+ is no longer uncommon) having some sort of common categories for modules that obviously relate (I've already mentioned 3 examples without even really thinking about it) is a big help in many ways, the most obvious is tracking down problems.
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Reg | www.seowebsales.com
I don't agree with everything
I don't agree with everything being under other. I think they should be logically separated into the type of functions they provide. Forum modules should go under a forum section. Administration modules should go under administration. Mail modules should go under mail, and so on.
I've even see two modules
I've even see two modules with the same package name but different case show up as two different sections in the module list.
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Reg | www.seowebsales.com
With Drupal being famous for
With Drupal being famous for it's taxonomy perhaps we could let people tag modules with as many keywords as is appropriate and then we could do keyword filtering on the page. That seems to be how the download section is done.
The packaging script could automatically pickup the keywords used for any module in the download area and add those keywords into the .info file - the developers wouldn't have to do anything new at all and we would have a much more powerful way to sort and filter scripts.
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Reg | www.seowebsales.com