Plugin Manager

I have been harboring some growing concerns about the direction of the plugin manager integration proposals for Drupal core almost since their inception, but have not been able to make an informed opinion on the subject until I had properly reviewed the proposed system on a much deeper scale.

While my impressions of the project and the current implementation are fairly negative, I have aimed to frame my criticisms in a positive constructive manner because I believe that the goals of the project are worthwhile, and that for a large section of users this could be a very flexible and usable solution.

Unfortunately a lot of my concerns have been well founded, and I believe that the implementation of this system needs to be taken in a different direction for it to be able to succeed in its goals, while not negatively affecting projects like Aegir, Open Atrium and many other ‘serious developers’.

Hi. This summer I wrote Drupal's Plugin Manager module. It is designed to allow users to install modules and themes directly from drupal.org using local ftp or ssh. Now, after a few releases and with another person on the project (jabapyth,) I'm starting to notice the traps that we've carefully laid out for ourselves. Thus, Jabapyth and I are planning to rewrite the UI for the module. This is where I was hoping for some help. I hope for us to create an interface that is not a headache waiting to happen.