I’ve been looking for some decent ways of managing the use of modules hosted in random Features Servers. Particularly, how do I use Drush as seamlessly with a Features Server as it works with Drupal.Org?

It turns out that Drush has a lot of special options buried in the pm-download (dl) command, the very Drush maneuver most helpful for my goal. Naturally, these options can be included in a Bash Alias for Drush.

alias dds='drush --source=http://code.developmentseed.org/fserver dl'

This alias specifically searches DevSeed’s features server for projects. Slide it into your .bashrc file. Now a quick $> dds fserver works like a charm.

I still think project repositories like Ubuntu’s package repos (or really, Arch repositories like Core, Extra, and Aur) have a lesson for us. But that can wait on the smoothing out of functionality like –destination, which allows you to say where a project will be saved, but not with the same grace as Drupal.Org projects and the modules/contrib/ directory.

Terms: drushfeatures-servers