Manual talk:Extensions/Archive 1

Versioning and file identification
I just had a bit of a problem trying to install an extension and fix another one. We are running 1.6.8, with PHP4. It was installed by a colleague, and he has done most of the work on it, including installing some extensions.

Today, one of our users reported that ParserFunctions wasn't working properly (it didn't produce a page at all), and also asked for StringFunctions, so I looked at these, starting of course with StringFunctions and ParserFunctions.

I was flabbergasted to find no version, date or compatibility information in the php files. I realise that they have a history in SVN, but that's not much use when you've downloaded odd files to your installation. I had no way of telling which version of ParserFunctions.php my colleague had loaded, and whether it was compatible with our installation (my first thought was that he had retrieved a 1.8 version). Once I looked at the log it was obvious that we were missing a function - sprintfDate - and I went looking for it, eventually finding Tim Starling's note that he had provided a compatibility version. Evidently the version we had was too old for that, but how could I tell? (His note didn't say there was an extra file to load, but I eventually realised that).

Am I missing something, or is this lack of version information in the files a disaster waiting to happen? --ColinFine 16:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)