Store total downloads in each plugin's manifest

[DavidGBrett]

It would be good to centrally record the total downloads of a plugin,
For example so that it can be shown in the plugin store (app & website)

This is potentially a sub issue of #284 as it would be good to cache this during any sorting by it

The existing github api for releases does provide this per release so we would need to loop through and sum them
https://api.github.com/repos/{username}/{repo_name}/releases

[jjw24]

Would this lead to users gravitating to the plugin that has the most downloads and newcomers ignored?

[DavidGBrett]

That depends on how much focus we give to it
As another sorting option but not the default
or if shown then shown alongside the last updated date etc for fair comparison

Honestly though I think in most cases people will use whatever plugin suits their needs not just because they are popular
Of course if there are multiple similar plugins then this will be a factor (e.g. the many steam plugins) but I think its better to let them know what the more established option is in this case as well.
At least that's how I'd expect it to be viewed.

Once we start tracking downloads we could relatively easily do monthly / weekly differences as well to make it fairer to newer plugins though

Regarding the default sorting order we can leave that untouched for now (not sure what causes that ordering right now though) or chose something fairer like last updated date