On 12/11/2013 11:21 AM, Chad wrote:
Sending wiki edits to Gerrit for review? Absolutely
not.
I'm totally cool with the idea of code review for Gadgets & so forth, just
not
using Gerrit. We considered it for Scribunto (and heck, I wrote half of a
proof
of concept) but shot it down because the idea totally sucked.
I think I agree with your conclusion, but based on my assumptions. It
would be useful to know why you think it sucked.
Alright, not on Gerrit. Where?
Even if projects enjoy their freedom to use and modify their gadgets, I
don't think anybody particularly enjoys having to copy (and eventually
localize) gadgets found in other projects. Definitely nobody enjoys
having to fix or re-sync those gadgets years later, when something
breaks and editors complain in the local village pump.
The idea of global invocation and a central repository is being
considered for templates [1]. Couldn't this be also an approach for
gadgets? Still developed directly on top of MediaWiki, with or without
mechanisms like flaggedrevs, but at least better coordinated and watched
in a reference site. Then projects would be free to rely on those
"upstream" gadgets directly, or to create their own forks, that could be
still documented as such and be hosted in the central repository.
Many times the copy of gadgets across projects involves localization of
strings that are hardcoded, an extra obstacle for anybody willing to
re-sync gadgets. Separation of code and strings for proper localization
would be an addition that all non-English projects would welcome as
well, allowing automatic resync of the code without translation blockers.
In theory,
mediawiki.org could be not only the central repository for
extensions, but also for templates, gadgets, and bots. With a central
catalog of software, quality assurance and user feedback could be better
articulated. Wikimedia projects would benefit just as much as any
MediaWiki instance out there, without stealing any freedom from them.
[1] Bug 39610 - Scribunto should support global module invocations (
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39610
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil