While helping out with #1421972: Usage statistics for distributions it occurred to me that update_advanced could provide a feature whereby distributions can tell it what projects are included in the distro and it can help manage the update stuff more sanely. Some distros just disable update.module b/c of the potential confusion and the likelihood that site owners will try individual updates instead of waiting for the distro itself to provide a new release. However, we could use hook_update_status_alter() (also in D6) so that update module can remain enabled but still hide warnings about releases from projects managed by the distribution. That's better than using hook_update_projects_alter() since removing projects from the list at that point would prevent *those* modules from getting proper usage tracking. It's better for update module to keep fetching info for those, but just not display warnings for new releases.

If this feature were in update_advanced, it'd be pretty easy for distro maintainers to just enable both update and update_advanced, set a variable or something with the list of projects in the distro, and be done. Seems like the easiest and sanest place for this code to live and be shared.

Comments

juan_g’s picture

Thank you very much for working on this really great and needed feature for distributions.

Some distros just disable update.module b/c of the potential confusion and the likelihood that site owners will try individual updates instead of waiting for the distro itself to provide a new release.

Yes, and because of this they lose their usage statistics, and their good position in the installation profiles / distributions listing, sorted by default by most installed.

Your idea would be an excellent solution to this.

Leeteq’s picture

Interesting.
(But why was this filed under 6.x so recently, and not 7.x , isnt the main development going on in the 7.x branch from now on?)

nedjo’s picture

Relevant code is in Commerce Kickstart, which filters update status to show only security releases for modules included in the distro. See:

Open Outreach contains similar code, with the addition of a settings option to display status info for all projects. See openoutreach_form_update_settings_alter() in openoutreach.profile.

caschbre’s picture

Any more thoughts on this? I'd love to use this with the Panopoly project (as opposed to creating another similar module) and think if we could make this work for all distributions we'd have a lot more usage / support.