[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #5116: WordPress (plugin) updates can trigger innapropriatly for non-hosted plugins

[WordPress Trac]

#5116: WordPress (plugin) updates can trigger innapropriatly for non-hosted
plugins
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 Reporter:  Quandary  |       Owner:  anonymous
     Type:  defect    |      Status:  new      
 Priority:  normal    |   Milestone:  2.3.1    
Component:  General   |     Version:  2.3      
 Severity:  normal    |    Keywords:           
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 It appears as though the plugin update service at api.wordpress.org
 utilizes only the plugin name and plugin version to determine if an update
 is available vs. any plugin matching the name that is hosted by WordPress.
 This method breaks down if there is a plugin that shares the same name as
 a WordPress hosted plugin.

 If the hosted plugin's version is higher than the non-hosted plugin's
 version, the user will be nagged to "upgrade" to a ''completely different
 plugin'' than s/he has installed. This probably is not the Right Thing to
 do. Naturally, plugin name collisions should be avoided by authors where
 possible, but handling this situation gracefully would be a big plus.

 This may be solvable as a side-effect to #5115 -- updates could be set up
 to not trigger, e.g., if there is no SVN repository name metadata. This
 would, however, require that the metadata be present, and would break
 backwards compatibility for update notification.

 An alternate solution would be to at least allow the user to dismiss the
 notification as "this plugin is not hosted by WordPress," or to add a
 piece of plugin header metadata indicating that a plugin is not hosted.

 Another option still would be to compare the plugin's metadata with the
 metadata present in the repository, and look for a match heuristically in
 that manner. This could run into problems if, e.g., a plugin's
 maintainership changes for a plugin that does ''not'' utilize version
 tags.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5116>
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