We'd love to see these sorts of objects become part of a developers exchange but we're still awaiting contributions from the community :)
I have a site links module which i'm happy to contribute. 3 admin pages, 5 publishing rules, 2 custom types, 3 templates and a custom config.
It allows categories and subcategories (N deep) of links to external sites with user ratings and broken link flagging.
There's definately a few gotchas to packaging it in a modular way for distribution.
Biggest problems I had were: 1) core bugs in publishing rule output 2) no formal procedure for install/uninstall of types and rules 3) no formal procedure for install/uninstall of dummy content 4) no way for a custom tab to find out its url indexes
Solutions for each:
1) bug report ;) (haven't check if its been fixed in the latest beta)
2) written instructions and a phonecall or two
3) remote access to server to do it for client
4) nasty nasty combination of a config var to be used in a search of the customadmin xml and emulate the core logic to figure out numbering.
If these things get fixed then I'd be much happier about releasing it to the public because it means less botchy glue code (and hence smoother core updates) and a much smoother setup.
For a more formal install & packaging I think we should devise a FarCry module description XML schema. This would have:
* name
* description
* author
* url
* list of custom types
* list of custom rules
* list of custom sec policies
* list of custom configs
* custom install file url
* custom uninstall file url
* dummy table data (WDDX?) url
All this and the files could be pacakaged as a zip.
For the community website you could then autoextract this information from the zip (which would mean it would be mega-easy for authors to keep the info fresh as well).
For the core install procedure we could deploy all the types, rules, secpols and configs and forward the user to the custom install file (if anything else needs to be done). Also in later iterations we could have it check for naming conflicts and deal with updates.
Also I think a way to group publishing rules would be very handy because the publishing rule list starts to get a bit big for that tiny little box (so all of a modules publishing rules would be grouped together).
Hey if you can deploy the whole of Farcry in 5 minutes flat shouldn't you be able to do the same with a module? =)
If we can get it to the stage were you can download a zip straight into the project folder, log into admin and install it, install dummy data and have a play with it in 5 minutes, delete dummy data and uninstall it then you're going to have a bunch more users and much more developer interest.
...and... add a sprinkling of the code protection features in BlackStone and you could have sellable FC modules.
-- tim lucas
http://www.toolmantim.com
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