[wp-hackers] Plugin Management and Autoupdate System

[Rob Miller]

> Let me ask you this: 
> ATM does WP check if the plugin is compatible? No.
> Has it been a catastrophe? No.
>   
I take it you weren't here when we released 2.0?
> 999 times out of 1000 a plugin won't break because of a new version. To
> assume it's broken means you're going to have a lot of people crying when
> that new version comes out... but none of that matters because:
>
> Plugin devs are lazy. Let's face it, we're not willing to maintain a plugin
> unless there is a serious bug or we have some tasty new features to add -
> but to have to update the plugin file with every new WP version is not nice.
>
>   
Not every WP version. It is a reasonable presumption that a plugin that 
works with 2.0.3 will work with 2.0.4, for example; the problem comes 
with the jump from 2.0 to 2.1, which was certainly a problem 1.5->2.0.

So, the best option is to force plugin authors to specify a max version, 
but allow them to use wildcards. I mean, something massively massively 
simple like filtering the_content and replacing X with Y will, with 
99.999% certainty, work no matter what; so, let the author put a 
MinVersion of 1.5 and a MaxVersion of *. A more complex plugin that 
hooks into a lot of WP's functionality, however, cannot easily rely on 
future compatibility, so give it a MinVersion of 1.5 and a MaxVersion of 
2.0.*, for example.

-- 
Rob Miller
http://robm.me.uk/ | http://kantian.co.uk/