[wp-hackers] Less than Core, More than Plugins/Themes: Proposing Optional Modules.

[Beau Lebens]

> For #2, we are more likely to see child-plugins emerge if we have a well-known way to include it. Does anyone know if there is sufficient information to support identifying dependent plugins in the plugin repository?

That sounds like it could be handled via an extension to the README
format, allowing plugin creators to specify a "requires" option that
would just reference another plugin (or perhaps a specific tag of
another plugin, for reliability's sake).

If that was the case, then as a starting point, plugins being
installed via the plugin installer could warn/alert the user if they
detected that they have dependencies that aren't met.