[wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins

[Chris Williams]

And one more advantage.  If I want to delete a plugin, I remove the
directory. That's it.  No turds left scattered all over the place, in
"bucket" directories that gather all kinds of turds of unknown origin.  All
plugin files live in the plugin's directory or its children.

What could be simpler?


> From: Chris Williams <chris at clwill.com>
> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:36:58 -0800
> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> Conversation: [wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins
> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins
> 
> You're making this too complicated.
> 
> Plugin is in a zip, with whatever file structure it wants.  The zip gets
> blasted out there, overwriting old files, creating new ones.  If the zip
> includes a file called "deprecated.fil" (or something) in the root directory
> of the plugin, the updater goes through it and deletes any files named in
> there.  Then the updater deletes "deprecated.fil".  Period.
> 
> Accomplishes:
> - Old files overwritten/updated.
> - New files added.
> - Deprecated files removed.
> - All other files (regardless of how they got there) retained.
> - Old plugins w/o a "deprecated.fil" file behave as today.
> 
> Easy-squeezy.
> 
>> From: Stephen Rider <wp-hackers at striderweb.com>
>> Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
>> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:19:37 -0600
>> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
>> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins
>> 
>> On Feb 18, 2009, at 6:11 PM, Chris Williams wrote:
>> 
>>> Which seems to me to be exactly how plugin upgrades should work,
>>> then this
>>> entire discussion is obviated :)
>>> 
>>>> From: Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com>
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 1:04 PM, scribu <scribu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> BTW, when core-upgrade is called, isn't the entire wp-content folder
>>>>> preserved? Or just the themes, plugins and uploads folders?
>>>> 
>>>> A core upgrade basically copies all the new files from the
>>>> distribution over the old ones. Then it goes through a list of "old
>>>> files" (defined in wp-admin/includes/update-core.php" and deletes any
>>>> files on that list. So any files not on the list and not in the
>>>> distribution are preserved.
>> 
>> 
>> No it isn't.  A lot of plugins use add-on files that a user can simply
>> upload.  Requiring the plugin to register them somehow requires a lot
>> of coding for plugins to ID and register files that are uploaded.
>> Code that is completely unnecessary.  It's a folder, folks.  Again, it
>> isn't anything a plugin author can't do already, it's just a question
>> of creating some sort of standard to follow so such files aren't
>> scattered all over the place.
>> 
>> Adding some registration scheme to WP core is a lot of coding that
>> isn't needed, and qould require extra code from plugin authors.
>> 
>> Just putting it all in /uploads/ dumps a lot of different types of
>> files -- different as in *use*.  Think about your desktop computer --
>> this is essentially the difference between Application Support files
>> and Documents.  They both are used by the apps, but they are different
>> things.
>> 
>> On Mac OS X, application support files should go in /Library/
>> Application Support/.  There's nothing particularly special about that
>> folder, except that it's the standard place that Apple said should be
>> the home for such files -- but it does prevent a lot of such files
>> being scattered all over the hard drive, and makes the folder
>> structure a LOT cleaner than some other major OSes I could name.
>> That's basically what I'm asking for here.
>> 
>> Stephen
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Stephen Rider
>> http://striderweb.com/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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