Plugin name clash

[Ryan]

I have two plugins with very similar names. But the infernal "PixoPoint Animations" plugin is being detected as the "PixoPoint Menu plugin" by the built in WordPress automatic updater and so instead of updating, it is being deleted and replaced by an entirely different plugin .... VERY infuriating!!!!

Any ideas on what I should do to correct this? I tried inserting a : between "Menu" and "Animations" but it didn't seem to help.

<?php
/*

	Plugin Name: PixoPoint Menu Plugin
	Plugin URI: http://pixopoint.com/pixopoint-menu/
	Description: A WordPress plugin which adds a menu to your WordPress site. Visit the <a href="http://pixopoint.com/pixopoint-menu/">PixoPoint Menu Plugin page</a> for more information about the plugin, or our navigation <a href="http://pixopoint.com/forum/index.php?board=4.0">support board</a> for help with adding the menu to your theme.
	Author: PixoPoint Web Development / Ryan Hellyer
	Version: 0.8.5 beta
	Author URI: http://pixopoint.com/

	Copyright (c) 2009 PixoPoint Web Development

	This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
	published by the Free Software Foundation.

	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

*/

<?php
/*

	Plugin Name: PixoPoint Menu: Animations
	Plugin URI: http://pixopoint.com/product/pixopoint-menu-animations/
	Description: A WordPress plugin which adds an animation effect to your menu. Visit the <a href="http://pixopoint.com/menu-animations/">PixoPoint Menu Animations page</a> for more information about the plugin, or our navigation <a href="http://pixopoint.com/forum/index.php?board=4.0">support board</a> for help with setting it up. For paid support, please try our <a href="http://pixopoint.com/services/premium-support/>Premium Support service</a>.
	Author: PixoPoint Web Development / Ryan Hellyer
	Version: 0.2
	Author URI: http://pixopoint.com/

	Copyright (c) 2009 PixoPoint Web Development

	This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
	published by the Free Software Foundation.

	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

*/

[mfields]

Just a shot in the dark, but have you tried to remove the colon from the plugin's name?

[Ryan]

I didn't have the colon originally. I added it to see if that would fix it ... it didn't :(

I think Mark Jaquith posted something somewhere which explained what WP.org used to detect differences in plugins, but I can't remember where. It had something to do with one of those giant topics that Chip started not long ago, but I can't remember which one let alone where in the dozen or so pages that the information was posted or linked to from.

[mfields]

Sorry, it didn't work... was hoping for a quick fix. I had a rare situation about a year ago where my style sheet had "/* Template: */" in style.css outside the initial header and all hell broke loose... I thought it might be a similar issue. Best of luck sorting it out!

[Rarst]

I've re-created plugin properties array from your description and made update API request with it - it returned empty.

One detail you hadn't posted are plugin folders and file names. Could it be that they have similar or same of something in that department?

As for troubleshooting see wp_update_plugins functions. It easy to dump both plugin data that get sent and API response in there.

Update: got a copy of Menu plugin, yep you have three plugins stuffed in one folder. I strongly suspect that is the reason. It probably matches pixopoint-menu folder to pixopoint-meny slug of main plugin.

[Ryan]

I think I get the same problem even when they're in separate folders, I'd need to check though.

[Ryan]

You hit the nail on the head :)

The problem only occurs when they are in the same folder.

[andreasnrb]

Its best to only have one plugin that updates per folder. Ottos facebook plugin works this way but contains like 10 plugins but since they are stored in the same repository on wp.org they all update.
Alot of the privacy issues are due to the crappy structure of plugins. There are no rules. This is why also this sort of name collisions occur also. I have had update collission with an entierly different plugin in separate folders by another author =).

[Otto]

Yeah, don't try to make plugins share a folder unless they're all in the same plugin in the repository. Because an update wipes the folder out completely and replaces it with that single plugin folder from the repo.

[Ryan]

There is logic to the madness. I'm trying to extrapolate code from one plugin and put it into another, but before that is complete, I was intending to just include the other plugin in the first plugin to ensure that I don't end up having to write two slightly different sets of code. I should be able to get around this by just bumping the version number to match the original plugin itself so that it doesn't recognise a version difference.

The particular plugins in question are not in the repository yet, they're just beta plugins I'm working on until they're ready for upload to the repo.