Title: [Plugin: Plugin Dependencies] Suggestion
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# [Plugin: Plugin Dependencies] Suggestion

 *  [Dougal Campbell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dougal/)
 * (@dougal)
 * [14 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-plugin-dependencies-suggestion/)
 * Great to see somebody tackle this! Drupal uses module dependencies to good effect,
   and I’ve always thought it would be a good idea for WordPress, too.
 * Suggestion: you currently deactivate the child plugin if a parent dependency 
   is deactivated. In Drupal, they _don’t let you_ deactivate a parent, until all
   of the dependent children are first deactivated. Could that be handled, and if
   so, what do you think about doing it that way? It seems a little more robust,
   to me.
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugin-dependencies/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugin-dependencies/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Author [scribu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scribu/)
 * (@scribu)
 * [14 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-plugin-dependencies-suggestion/#post-2296012)
 * I am not familiar with Drupal, but I am familiar with Debian’s apt-get system,
   which I think is fantastic.
 * When you attempt to uninstall a package, it will list the dependent packages 
   that will also be uninstalled.
 * I think that’s what we should do here as well: show a confirmation window with
   all the child plugins that would be deactivated.
 *  [Ben Huson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/husobj/)
 * (@husobj)
 * [14 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-plugin-dependencies-suggestion/#post-2296483)
 * One thing to note re deactivation is that you may have several plugins active
   that depend on another plugin. In that case you would not want to deactivate 
   the dependent plugin as it would still be needed.
 * I haven’t tested this plugin yet (although I am intending to) so forgive me if
   it already handles that scenario.
 * Also as another suggestion, if plugin dependancies could be applied to themes
   too that might hopefully provide an alternative solution to themes which package
   themselves with plugins.
 *  Plugin Author [scribu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scribu/)
 * (@scribu)
 * [14 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-plugin-dependencies-suggestion/#post-2296484)
 * The main reason I hesitated to allow themes to specify dependencies is that they
   would show up in style.css, but now that the dependencies are just plugin names,
   I’m ok with that.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘[Plugin: Plugin Dependencies] Suggestion’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/plugin-dependencies.svg)
 * [Plugin Dependencies](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-dependencies/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-dependencies/#faq)
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 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/plugin-dependencies/unresolved/)
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 * 3 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [scribu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scribu/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-plugin-dependencies-suggestion/#post-2296484)
 * Status: not resolved