Contrib.social

Decide on consistent naming for future core modules that implement Automatic Updates and Project Browser functionality

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 17 August 2021, about 4 years ago
Updated 28 May 2025, 4 months ago

Problem/Motivation

We currently have two separate initiatives underway: Automatic Updates 🌱 Automatic Updates Initiative overview and roadmap Active and Project Browser → .

For the former, there's already the Automatic Updates contrib module → . The 1.x version of it is only for sites with codebases that are not managed with Composer: in other words, primarily for Drupal 7 sites, and also for some Drupal 8 sites that choose to not use Composer despite that limiting the available contrib modules that can be installed. Work has also begun in the 2.x branch of that module for Composer-managed sites, though this is still early (pre-alpha) code.

When the 2.x branch is sufficiently far enough long, that's what will get proposed for addition into Drupal 10 core.

However, I propose that when the module is proposed for addition to core, it should not be named automatic_updates, for 2 reasons:

  1. It's not ideal for a core module and a contrib module to have the same name. We've done this before (e.g., with the jsonapi module), but doing so confuses packages.drupal.org with respect to how to resolve drupal/MODULE_NAME_THAT_EXISTS_IN_BOTH_CORE_AND_CONTRIB.
  2. I think it's a bad name for the core module, because it will contain more functionality than just providing automatic updates. It will also support manual (click a button) updates. And it will eventually also provide the installation functionality for Project Browser. In other words, it will manage composer require operations in addition to composer update operations.

Given the above, I think a better name would be package_manager.

However, that would create a dichotomy of terminology between "Package Manager" and "Project Browser". The implication of such a naming is that you browse for projects and then for the projects that you decide you want to use on your site, Package Manager managers the installation and updates of the corresponding packages. Except that in this process, "projects" and "packages" are exactly the same thing. Well almost. Each project is a package. However the package might pull in dependencies, where each dependency is also a package, but may or may not also be a project.

I wonder if we would be better off with naming "Project Browser" something more like "Package Browser" or "Package Manager UI"? I know we have a lot of history on drupal.org behind the word "project", but the rest of the world (Composer, npm, operating systems) have settled on the word "package".

Proposed resolution

  1. Decide on package_manager as the module name that will implements automatic updates and other package management functionality in core.
  2. Decide on a name for the module that will let you visually browse for projects/packages that are on drupal.org that you might want to add to your site. My recommendation is that this name include the word "package" in it rather than "project", for consistency with the "package_manager" module.
  3. If we do the above, then also figure out where else within Drupal's UI and on drupal.org that we should replace the word "project" with "package".

Remaining tasks

Discuss the above proposal and suggest alternate options.

User interface changes

API changes

Data model changes

📌 Task
Status

Needs review

Version

11.0 🔥

Component

other

Created by

🇺🇸United States effulgentsia

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  • Comment 4 months ago →
    🇳🇿New Zealand quietone

    The Ideas project is being deprecated. This issue is moved to the Drupal project. Check that the selected component is correct. Also, add the relevant tags, especially any 'needs manager review' tags.

  • Comment 3 months ago →
    🇺🇸United States dww

    See discussion in ✨ Add Alpha level Experimental Automatic Updates module Needs work . The core thing is going to be called update_manager, not auto_updates.

    I believe "Project Browser" is also already set. I haven't seen any interest in trying to rename that.

    package_manager seems to already be resolved, and is already in core as an experimental module, and is what both

    Tempted to close this as either duplicate or outdated, since I believe all the decisions have already been made.

  • Status changed to Fixed about 2 months ago
  • Comment about 2 months ago →
    🇺🇸United States dww

    Re: package vs. project vs. module vs. theme vs. extension:

    1. A project (or "package") is a collection of one or more modules or themes.
    2. Each module or theme is an "extension".
    3. "Project browser" is browsing projects, not individual extensions.
    4. Ditto package_manager: it's operating at the level of complete composer projects/packages, not individual Drupal extensions

    So I think we've landed on (more or less) the right names:

    • package_manager
    • update_manager
    • project_browser

    Arguably, "project_browser" could become "package browser" or even "package finder", but per #14, "project" isn't any more of a Drupalism than "package" would be, and "project_browser" is already the name in a bazillion places (docs, presentations, existing code, etc).

    Whereas:

    • All 3 of the new core modules now have decided names.
    • I posted over 6 weeks ago proposing that this is fixed, and there's been no further discussion or concerns.

    Therefore be it resolved: I'm going to go ahead and mark this fixed.

    Initial pass at saving credit for meaningful contributions here. If anyone feels left out, feel free to add a comment.

    Thanks,
    -Derek

  • Comment about 1 month ago →
    System Message

    Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

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