First module Search Index contributed, unfortunately, not without first mistakes made.

Only today I am reading https://www.drupal.org/node/299070 :

Avoid naming your modules with a prefix that is the name of a core module, or an active contrib module that you plan to use. Examples of this error include 'node_foo', 'comment_bar', and 'views_baz.' Better alternatives might be 'nodefoo', 'bar_for_comments', or 'bazify_views.'

Note that very many contrib modules do not conform to this advice. Do not take that as a license to ignore; each module that does so increases the risk for future modules.

Really don't want to run onto possible problems because `search_index` is prefixed with the core module's machine name `search`. Should I get the module renamed, and if yes how, or hsould I just leave it in the second category of `Note that very many contrib modules do not conform to this advice`?

Comments

AltaGrade created an issue. See original summary.

drumm’s picture

drumm
he/him
Location NY, US
commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

Projects on Drupal.org are not renamed. You can create a new project with the new name, and link to that from the existing project page. We don’t want to allow anyone to take the old name and replace it with something else. Anyone who is using the old project should be alerted to the name change by information on the old project’s page, and removing support to make it unsupported in their sites’ update status.

This naming conflict is becoming less of an issue as hooks are replaced with object-oriented code in Drupal 8. For this specific case, I don’t immediately see any conflicts, although other contrib modules could change that. Be aware of what hooks you might inadvertently be implementing when you create new functions; you can prefix internal/private function names with an underscore to greatly reduce risk.

The (human-readable) project name is a bit confusing. It isn’t a search index, it is changing how existing indexing behaves. That can be changed to something like “Search index by content type.”

altagrade’s picture

altagrade commented

@drumm, thanks a lot for the detailed input. Per your advice I've changed the human-readable name of the project not to “Search index by content type”, but "Search Index Options", because besides limiting index by content type, it changes couple other things on the search admin page, like:

  • providing a new admin configuration to limit content types for search indexing;
  • making only active search modules available for choosing as the default one;
  • locking the default search module to prevent it from unselecting;