Item8205: fixing use of VERSION and RELEASE and DEPENDENCIES

1. Use | Release: | %$RELEASE% | in plugin info
2. Use | Version: | %$VERSION% | in plugin info
3. Use our $RELEASE = $Rev$
   Your choice - you could also use $Date: 2009/11/17 18:11:00 $ or even X.Y.Z if you prefer, but then you have to keep it up-to-date -- MichaelTempest - 03 Jul 2009
4. Use our $VERSION = '$Rev$'; unless you specifically want to maintain the $VERSION by hand e.g. because you maintain plugins on branches -- MichaelTempest - 03 Jul 2009
5. Use RELEASE - and not VERSION in DEPENDENCIES
   Use VERSION - and not RELEASE in DEPENDENCIES -- MichaelTempest - 03 Jul 2009

Checklist:

Plugin	Done
AliasPlugin
DBCachePlugin
FilterPlugin
GenPDFPrincePlugin
GluePlugin
HeadlinesPlugin
IfDefinedPlugin
ImagePlugin
ImageGalleryPlugin
JQueryPlugin
LdapContrib
LdapNgPlugin
MathModePlugin
MediaWikiTablePlugin
MediaWikiToFoswikiContrib
NatEditPlugin
NewUserPlugin
RedDotPlugin
RenderPlugin
SetVariablePlugin
TagCloudPlugin
TimeSincePlugin
TopicNameValidationPlugin
UploadPlugin
VotePlugin

-- MichaelDaum - 02 Jul 2009

In short RELEASE is free-form, VERSION should be standardized.

-- MichaelDaum - 03 Jul 2009

Just for info I am removing any use of %$RELEASE% and %$VERSION% from the default plugins. It is a shit system and causes me too much extra work. For non-default plugins I leave it to you guys to decide what you do but default plugins are a problem because even though nothing has changed in a default plugin, it gets a new revision each time I release Foswiki and then I have to re-upload them all to Foswiki.org.

So please everyone - do not put them back as I now REMOVE them from default plugins.

And I repeat. If Michael and other prefers this way for their own plugins I do not care. It does not harm in those cases because build and release of a single plugin is ONE operation which is in sync and intentional.

-- KennethLavrsen - 03 Jul 2009

No good advice as it makes it hard to standardize. We already score very low on the web-based plugin installer.

I've been writing plugins for ages now and it always did cost me too many brain cycles to update version and release numbers in a consistent way ... all too often I failed just because of that redundancy.

I strongly encourage every plugin author to use %$RELEASE% and %$VERSION% in their plugins.

If there is a problem with the current VERSION schema, i.e. that it fires dependencies too often, then we need to sort that out separately. Anyway, that's more a problem of how do maintain the DEPENDENCIES file.

And frankly, core plugins should showcase best practices headmost.

-- MichaelDaum - 05 Jul 2009

Note that the BuildContrib is now changed so the use of RELEASE and VERSION gives meaningful content.

-- KennethLavrsen - 21 Sep 2009

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