[wp-hackers] Plugin zip problem on wordpress.org

[Michael D Adams]

I'll work on setting up the below sometime next week.
Mike

On Nov 13, 2007, at 3:10 PM, Callum Macdonald wrote:

> +1 - Sounds good to me - Callum.
>
> Michael D Adams wrote:
>>> I think the consensus from people who responded is that adding the  
>>> option to specify a subdirectory would be useful. It's backwards  
>>> compatible, I don't see any down side nor have I noticed any  
>>> objections.
>>
>> Well - there's always a down side: figuring out how it should work,  
>> time in making it happen, documenting it, etc. More importantly,  
>> one goal of the WordPress Plugin Directory is to make downloading  
>> and installing experience for all plugins to be as consistent as  
>> possible for the user. How do we ensure that experience is the same  
>> for plugins using the subdirectory feature and for those that don't?
>>
>> There are however compelling reasons to offer such a feature. So  
>> let's talk about how it should happen.
>>
>>
>> Situation:
>>
>> I have a plugin called Wonder Plugin hosted at http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wonder-plugin/ 
>> . Suppose I have files that look like this:
>>
>> /wonder-plugins/tags/2.1/readme.txt
>> /wonder-plugins/tags/2.1/tests.php
>> /wonder-plugins/tags/2.1/release/wonder.php
>>
>> And a readme.txt file *in trunk/* with the following line:
>>
>> Stable Tag: 2.1/release
>>
>>
>> Proposal:
>>
>> The Plugin directory will package the zip file from the release/  
>> subdirectory of the 2.1 tag rather than zipping up everything.
>>
>> The zip file will contain the readme.txt file as well, even though  
>> the readme.txt file is not in the release/ directory. (If there is  
>> another readme.txt file in the release/ directory it will get  
>> *overwritten*).
>>
>> The zip file will contain all of those files (release/* and  
>> readme.txt) wrapped in a directory called wonder-plugin/. So the  
>> contents of the zip will look like:
>>
>> wonder-plugin/readme.txt
>> wonder-plugin/wonder.php
>>
>> The zip file will be named wonder-plugin.zip.
>>
>> Zip files from other tags (downloaded from the "other versions"  
>> link, e.g. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podpress/download/)  
>> will contain the *entire* SVN tree. Why? We determine the  
>> "packaging subdirectory" from the readme file in trunk/. The  
>> directory structure can change between tags, so we can't know from  
>> trunk/readme.txt what the right thing to do is for any tag but the  
>> stable one. We could parse each tag's readme.txt, but I'm not  
>> convinced that's useful for plugin authors or users. This is  
>> *inconsistent*. Is that bad?
>>
>> If the plugin had specified Stable Tag: trunk/release, everything  
>> above would apply with the trunk/ dir taken to be the stabel "tag"  
>> dir. (Stable Tag: trunk is equivalent to not including a Stable Tag  
>> field. Including it is best practice.)
>>
>> If the plugin had no subdirectory in its Stable Tag field, the  
>> entire tag directory is packaged in the zip (this is what happens  
>> now).