An Issue I had And Solved (contribution) Location Map Block Does Not Appear On Node

Well, forgive me if this was answered, but in the 12 hours of debug and frenzied Googeling, my problem was not apparent on any forum. I am new to Drupal, but come from a programmers background using ColdFusion and PHP. I have about 4 weeks experience and have a firm grasp on core concepts.

Anyway.

I followed 3 different tutorials in order to implement Location + Location CCK + Gmap. I tried each patch in several forum threads, used the stables releases and the RC releases. My problem was consistent across each. I even used the CVS releases from just days ago. Nothing actually fixed what I was experiencing...

So, I will 'in a nutshell' describe my methods... which can be further explained at this wonderful tutorial : http://www.drupaltherapy.com/gmap

My current Drupal set up involved a fresh install and a manual migration of 25M nodes. These nodes could be broken down into several CCK types, but the relevant ones are

Region (1) => (M) subregion (1) => (M) Areas (1) => (M) Buildings (1) => (M) Apartments (1) => (M) Listings.

I needed to Polygon Geo code the Region, Subregion and Areas. Further, I wanted to pinpoint the building with the option to have many addresses for a building, which is possible in some areas. I have not attempted the polygons yet, I figured the building pinpoints would be cake based upon the tutorial. I was wrong.

Problem: Followed the tutorial to a tee. The enabled Location Map block DID NOT appear on my node. Oddly, it appeared when I 'edited' a node, and when I had devel load and devel render on. The Block_view function was NOT being called for some reason on my view.

I tried :

<?php
$block = module_invoke('gmap_location', 'block', 'view', 0);
print $block['content']; ?>

and

<?php
$lat = $location[latitude];
$lon = $location[longitude];
		
print gmap_simple_map($lat,$lon,'','Hello World!','14','700px','500px','');
?>

Both worked beautifully, but they were in my template file and seemed 'hackish' to me. I wanted my block to work damn it!

So, I went to my database to look at location and location_instance. I quickly realized that location was being populated, and location_instance was as well -- BUT the VID was not being populated... and with devel I realized that it was joining on the VID...

location_load_location
SELECT * FROM Main_location WHERE lid = 3

location_load_locations
SELECT lid FROM Main_location_instance WHERE vid = 3

Now, why we do it twice? I have not figured this out yet. I figure I can help optimize this process? Unless my install is a 1 off.. but with the amount of complaints I saw about the block not appearing... I think this may be a bigger issue. People usually settle for the patches and views hacks... Not me.

Anyway, my solution was to populate the VID. SO i modified location_cck.module.

Line 177 is:

<?php
    case 'update':
      // Store instances of locations by field name and vid.
      $genid = 'cck:'. $field['field_name'] .':'. $node->vid;
      location_save_locations($items, array('genid' => $genid,);
      // CCK automatically picks up the new lids and stores them in its own tables.
      break;

// SHOULD BE:  location_save_locations($items, array('genid' => $genid,'vid' => $node->vid); 
?>

Or I could be a complete idiot? But everything works exactly like the tutorial advertised now. If anyone has a problem with the block displaying, try this and let me know how you fair ?