Idea – “Managed” Package Extensions to reuse Base “Managed” Package Prefix !

Recently I came across a requirement where I need to

• Create package extensions to an existing  Salesforce application.

• This application is already having a managed package created.

• All the new package extensions will include that managed package as dependency and will add on their respective features.

To start prototyping for customer, we quickly did following steps. For more details on creating packages and extensions please refer developerforce.com and salesforce documentations.

The above steps in image are from this developerforce wiki page.

I completed all the above 5 steps and was ready with basic extension functionality for demo soon (thanks to force.com platform goodness). So I was having a cool “unmanged” package extension created for a “managed” package. This unmanaged extension was ready and installable !

Please note : I was able to create an “unmanaged” package extension, that means the extension was having no package prefix, upgrading support and all cool benefits of going “managed” !

What’s the big deal in creating managed extensions ?

One can easily create package extensions that are “managed”, but the DE Org 2 (Extension Development Org) needs to get its own namespace prefix and that will be carried over to the extension. Once we assign an org wide namespace prefix, and create extensions, they will be managed.

Pain point here is both “managed” package and “managed” extension will carry different namespace prefixes, does it sounds good ? NO, would like to have same “managed” package prefix carried over to the “managed” package extensions. Imagine an Salesforce application having 4-5 extensions each carrying its own prefix, doesn’t sounds good.

Regarding the same I had a good discussion with @shobyabdi and @cirruscg on twitter ! Many Thanks to both for helping me understand  i.e. managed package and managed package extensions carry different prefixes, I was in strong impression about some way to use the same managed package prefix in extensions too

New Idea for having this feature !

It would be nice to have this feature in salesforce i.e. Both “Managed” Package and “Managed” Package Extensions carry the same prefix !

So I have created this idea on Idea Exchange, please VOTE and PROMOTE it !

Link to idea : https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?c=09a30000000D9xtAAC&id=08730000000ZZkaAAG

Feedback & Suggesions ?

If you have some cleaner way of handling this problem, I would love to hear back. Please share your views via comments.