The one weakness I see of the WordPress SVN Plugin Repository is that there is no way to easily deploy your plugin from that space after you’ve written it.
I susppose that there is some utility in “releasing” your plugins from your own site, but it seems like there should be an easier way to deploy plugins than the currently required process. (Something like: zipping your own working directory, uploading it to your site, telling everyone it’s there and not at the repo even though that’s where the code usually is, blah blah blah…)
Ok, so check this out. I made a new tool at RedAlt that lists all of the plugins in the repository. Pick one, and it will show you all of the available tagged versions. Pick a tagged version and it will create a zip archive of all of the plugin files, and send it to you immediately. Pretty sweet, eh?
The code is a little embarassing in the way that it cheats to obtain results, and it certainly needs to do some (any!) caching, but it seems like something that could work. In any case, I wouldn’t point your deployment links to RedAlt just yet, since there may be some kinks to work out. Still, the path to deployment has the potential to be that much easier now.
(If you’re interested in the lousy code for this, look here. I hang my head in shame.)
