How to check Magento Connect 2.0 extension source before downloading

Question

I'm leery of just installing community extensions, even with my version control. Is there a way to get the tgz so I can unpack it and inspect the extension before installing it?

Answer 1

As described on this site, Magento Connect 2.0 has a specific format that is easy to decipher. 1st get the Magento Connect 2.0 key. Example: http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/Raveinfosys_Deleteorder

Then go to Magento Commerce website for that extension to find its version in the Release Notes tab. For this example, the latest version is 1.0.3

Now, combine the original key into this URL: http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/Raveinfosys_Deleteorder/1.0.3/Raveinfosys_Deleteorder-1.0.3.tgz

I specifically use this command to download the extension to my work's internal server:
wget http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/Raveinfosys_Deleteorder/1.0.3/Raveinfosys_Deleteorder-1.0.3.tgz
... and then I'll normally make changes to those files to fit our template, ie change from default/default to default/my_template. Once I'm all happy I re-tar these files, scp the new tar-ball to my live site, and tar -xzvf via the ssh shell at Magento root.

I don't use magento connect... probably should, just can't bring myself to "trust" it blindly.

Or to make generic: http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/Package_Name/[ver]/Package_Name-[ver].tgz

Answer 2

Some websites offer the links or proxied links to download any mangeto package from mangento connect as .tgz file (that is a gzip'ed tar-file). You get the standard magento PEAR package then.

These sites require the Magento Connect key to obtain the package:

1. Direct Download Magento Extension Without Pear (Tangkoko)
2. Download Magento Extension (http://freegento.com/) (only latest package version)

The first site offers a link to the package on the Magento Connect web-server, so that you can see how it works.

For Magento Connect 2.0 it is also written about how it works in a blog-post and there is a bash script that shows it pretty well on github.