Ichiro Watanabe wrote:
I would like to take one step back and ask a couple of
questions
1. Do all $wgVariable defaults behave this way, or are there two kinds
of defaults, one that gets set before LocalSettings and one after?
No. Only those (and all of them) that contain another $wgVariable into
its default value.
2. In any case, who is actually interested in the
latter class (i.e.
default values that are set *after* LocalSettings)? From my short
experience, the average installer and admin is not. Maybe we need to
make it clear that these default values are for use of extension
developers (just guessing here) as opposed to administrators. In fact,
if this is the case, then I would probably remove altogether this
confusing default documentation from what is the *user* (i.e. admin)
manual of MediaWiki - as opposed to what would be a developer's
manual.
The same people.
Take for example $wgStylePath. Its default value is "{$wgScriptPath}/skins".
The admin may be interested in changing just $wgStylePath.
Or it may want to change $wgScriptPath, in which case (if he didn't also
set $wgStylePath), $wgStylePath will change to still be the skin
subfolder from $wgScriptPath.
I think it is only confusing if you look at DefaultSettings expecting to
see the default there and can't find it.