[josm-dev] Plugin Popularity

[MP]

>  instead of today's
>
>  JOSM/1.5 (2069 SVN en_GB) Java/1.6.0_0
>
>  I would transmit
>
>  JOSM/1.5 (2069 SVN en_GB; wmsplugin, validator, slippymap) Java/1.6.0_0

This could create some network overhead - there are 39 plugins in
JOSM's "official plugin list", of those I have personally 16 installed
(plus one that I made myself). In situation where JOSM is making many
requests (WMS plugin? Download way members? Upload not as atomic/diff
uploads?) this could be ... not good. 200 extra bytes per request (or
even more if you'll include plugin versions) seems to be not much, but
it is probably more than rest of request headers. Users with slow
upload (ADSL, ...) won't be happy.

Browsers usually also only report their version and not list of
installed plugins (ok, with browsers this could be a bit privacy and
security issue)

>  This would enable us to make an estimate about which plugins are most
>  popular, and we could rank them accordingly - assuming the most popular
>  ones are also the most important ones.
>
>  If you find this undesirable (it is a privacy issue but we have already
>  sneaked in the version and language without asking anyone), then I would
>  like to find some other way to indicate to new users which plugins are
>  those commonly used.

Some way that won't shout complete list with every request. Perhaps add some
X-installed-plugins header only to requests to fetch the plugin list
(http://josm.openstreetmap.de/plugin)

Martin