[wp-hackers] Plugin Directory Bug

[Mark Jaquith]

On Mar 19, 2007, at 6:52 PM, Timo Kissing wrote:

> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it possible to move a tag with  
> SVN?
> So all people would have to do is create a tag named "latest" and move
> it whenever they have a new (stable) version ready. This would mean a
> little more work for each plugin developer, but it would not  
> require any
> changes to the packaging system and it would allow for tagging of beta
> version, release candidates and other non-stable releases without the
> packaging system having to "filter out" those tags when trying to
> determine which tag "latest" actually should be mapped to.

It's possible to use tags in this way, but it is sort of contrary to  
accepted SVN practices whereby tags are considered a snapshot in time  
that doesn't change.

The packaging system doesn't do any guesswork when picking the stable  
version.  If you provide a "Stable tag:" meta line in your trunk's  
readme.txt it will use that for the stable version.  If not, /trunk/  
is considered stable.  When you provide a stable tag in your trunk's  
readme.txt, that is the only thing the trunk's readme.txt will be  
used for.  It will essentially act as a pointer to the tag's  
readme.txt information.  This allows you to develop in trunk and  
change your trunk's readme.txt file without worrying that people  
downloading your stable tag are going to see the updated readme.txt

I think plugin.latest.zip is a good idea, as that would allow you to  
link to the "stable download" from an external source and have that  
file be updated as your trunk's readme.txt is updated to indicated  
the latest stable version.  As it is now, you have a moving target,  
and would have to visit the plugin's information page to get the link  
to the latest stable tag.

--
Mark Jaquith
http://markjaquith.com/

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