There may be a little bit of confusion about what I was planning for the Central Plugin Site.
The way I see it at least, this Central Plugin Site will function much like what Kristine's Plugin Directory does now. It will be a site where people can go to get an official list of available plugins for Movable Type. In addition to what Kristine's site does already, it will also provide MT users with an XML file containing a list of the plugins, which the Plugin Manager will read in.
This XML file will contain:
- plugin names
- authors
- descriptions
- links to information and documentation
- links to the files to download (which would, at the moment, most likely point to the author's site)
- security checks for plugin archive files (just to make sure off-site files have not been tampered with)
; "Feed Stats Widget")
; "Google Referrer")
; "MediaConsumer Template Output")
; "MediaConsumer List Items")
; "MediaConsumer Edit Item")
; "mt-qotd.png")
; "Vox-qotd.png")
Ah okay, gotcha. Central site with links to the plugins. Good.
i guess like others i thought it was gonna be the "ultimate plugin" that will reside on every copy of MT and help i installing plugins.
hmm.. kind of disappointed. I /misoverestimated/ it.
I think NewsPro... (when it was coranto anyway) has something like that. You put a zip file in the plugin directory, it unzips it and puts it where it needs to be.
This means there'll have to be some sort of language that will tell the installer where files need to go. Something like the .ppd files used by activeperl in installing perl modules.
eg.
<MTPluginInfo MTVersion="2.51">
<Description name="MTWinampList" version"0.1" text="This allows you to pull your current winamp playist into MT">
<Files number="4">
<location="<$MTPluginsFolder$>">
MTWinampList.pl
MTAutoUpdateWinampList.pl
</location>
<location="<$MTExtLib$>">
MTWinampList.pm
</location>
<ReadMe language="en,es,kr">
MTWinamList.txt
</Readme>
<Files>
</MTPluginInfo>
Lol... ok i'm being too ambitious. So something like that tell the installer to put the files in the right location. And also knows all filesin the readme tags go into the Plugins Readme Folder... anyone? Possible?
It would be nice if some of this info were provided by each plugin AFTER installation, too. That way MT could be extended (by Ben and Mena) to list installed plugins with the relevant info.
I've started putting version info tags into my plugins (i.e. MTPaginateVersion) but there should be a more general and official way. Maybe embedded as pod documentation? That should be easy to extract.
Just another question.
Is the plugin manager going to download the installation file or does one have to download a file put it in a plugin installation folder.
If so, will the PMgr automaticcally detect if two files in the same directory are the same plugin but of different versions?
If it does detect this, will it automatically install the newer version or will it give a choice.
Furthermore.. if PMgr is looking on a remote server for the plugin files, will it give an option to install an older version?
that will be usefule in an example where say, someone was too quick in downloading a an updated plugin that then tunrs out to have an error,
it'd be easier for the berson to uninstall the new one, and re-install the new one without having to manually remove the old files via ftp.
ja?
Faf, Do I know you?
Have you ever been to St Louis?
If yes, hit me up on ICQ: 136547585.
If not - sorry you just remind me of someone.
regards,
Chris
Don't think this is the place for me. Sorry all you adorable computer geeks.