[wp-hackers] Dotclear-like install script

[Xavier Borderie]

2.7's automatic upgrade tool is incredibly useful, and will save time
to all WP users.
But users will still have to install WP manually (or, for pre-2.7
users, upgrade manually, or using the WPAU upgrade), which brings them
back to the old world of overlong file transferts through FTP, for
almost 7 Mb and 700 files.
Now that WP has a real-deal upgrade tool with the adequate server
support, it would be cooler to go one step further: have user only
download/transfert a single PHP file, and let it do all the dirty
work. If we can do it for upgrades, would it be that hard to do for
installs?

Dotclear, a nifty and pretty advanced blog tool from France, does just
that: their 2.1 added automatic upgrade along with single-file install
- which makes for, as they write, "the most reliable and easy way to
install Dotclear 2".
http://dotclear.org/blog/post/2008/11/01/Release-of-Dotclear-2.1
http://dotclear.org/download
http://www.dotclear.net/blog/post/2008/10/19/auto-install
(explanation, in french)
http://66.102.9.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://www.dotclear.net/blog/post/2008/10/19/auto-install
(google translation of above post)

Their dotclear2-loader.php file is a mere 12 Kb, less than 500 lines,
checks for many things... and is GPL :)
I'm not saying we should steal their hard work, but I think that after
2.7 auto upgrade, have auto-install in 2.8 would be another great
addition.



-- 
Xavier Borderie