Features + user permissions: what are the pros and cons of all in one versus separate? I need to carry out a review of our user roles and permissions. Currently some roles and permissions are already bundled into existing features (usually custom content types), but most are not. I would like to get everything committed into features to kick-start the review.

What are the pros and cons of either of these approaches:


Have one 'roles and permissions' feature that collects all of the roles and permissions? (This adds a lot of modules as dependencies.)
Include roles and permissions into other features when needed? (This might still require a separate feature for the permissions that don't fit into other features.)


Alternative methods (eg to help reduce the amount of roles/permissions) welcome too!

Note: a lot of our custom content types share reusable fields, which will need to have user permissions defined for them.
In terms of the user experience, listing the permission along with the feature is the better option. You will need to be searching a very long list if your permissions are complex and extensive.

The even more compelling reason to keep the feature and permissions together is for exporting. If you only plan to export a particular feature, it takes a long with it dependencies from a bunch of other modules.