[wp-hackers] Auto Update Plugins

[Stephen Rider]

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/