Ship included files with extension

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We've been using @include to include css and external jquery plugins for our extension. We also load the html template for our extension through appAPI.request.get. The problem with this is that it requires strict version control of the included files on our server.

A couple weeks ago, this happened: We made a quick feature addition that required both changes to the extension code and the template. We uploaded the template and pushed changes to the extension code simultaneously. The problem is that the extension takes somewhere between several hours and a day to update on the user's browser. In the meantime, the template had changed, so users "saw" the new feature, but it did not work properly since there was no javascript code to handle the new feature. The (temporary) solution was to have a condition in the template that displayed the new feature only if some variable was set in the new extension code.

This solution will break if changes to the templates are more complex. We have version control setup on our server (so that extension version 0.2 points to included files in a directory 0_2). But this version control is a pain, especially for minor releases (like bug fixes).

I suggest that there be a way to ship arbitrary files with the extension. This way, we could make changes to the templates, css, and other js code and not have a headache dealing with version control. And this way, any changes to the included files will only be revealed when the extension is updated.