Hi Timo,
Thanks for clarifying this.
I would like to also point interested folks to the discussion taking
place here:
I think the MUST/SHOULD/OPTIONAL language was in a large part the
initial source of my confusion.
Ostrzyciel
On 2/15/22 15:41, Krinkle wrote:
Hi Ostrzyciel. Replies inline.
On Thu, 27 Jan 2022, at 08:15, Ostrzyciel wrote:
Maybe a dumb question – I get a profound impression that this email
*and* the guidelines are directed at Wikimedia employees, not
MediaWiki extension developers in general.
...why? I thought that most extensions out there are not managed by
Wikimedia, right?
These guidelines, and indeed most coding conventions and development
guidelines, are directed at MediaWiki developers in general. They are
not merely for WMF-maintained extensions or WMF staff.
Of the 70+ bullet points in the current draft, there are exactly 2
points specific to WMF, and these are explicitly called out as such to
avoid confusion (those are about sec/perf review, and stewardship).
The best practices document aims to reflect status quo among MediaWiki
developers, which includes maintainers of the many MediaWiki hosted in
Gerrit that aren't WMF-deployed. It is my understanding that by and
large extensions follow the same coding styles, conventions, and
guidelines. I also find in practice that volunteers contribute as much
(if not, more than) staff to the shaping and implementation of these
guidelines. Although these volunteers do tend to contribute more to
WMF-deployed extensions, they are not currently staff.
In the latter case – are Wikimedia employees the
right group to be
guiding the discussion around these guidelines?
No. I specifically addressed the email to all/everyone, and all MW
developers are welcome to participate. Extension maintainers often do
follow these conventions. But, they are by no means required to. It's
not a requirement for hosting (unlike e.g. licensing and code of
conduct), and there are certainly numerous extensions that follow a
different coding style, or don't follow any (publicly known) guidelines.
There is one line in the TLDR of my email where I called upon tech
leads among WMDE/WMF staff. I recognise this may have set a confusing
tone.
-- Timo
On 1/27/22 05:43, Krinkle wrote:
> TLDR: Tech leads please review Best practices for extensions
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_extensions> on
>
mediawiki.org.
>
> Hi all,
>
> You may be familiar with the Best practices for extensions
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_extensions> page
> on
mediawiki.org. It has been marked as a draft since 2017.
>
> I'd like to polish this page and get it to a state where it would be
> uncontroversial to label it as "Development guideline
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development_guidelines>". This would
> not make it a hard policy. Neither does it imply that it covers all
> practices in all situations.
>
> Rather, it would mean that the items that are there now are indeed a
> part of our current best practices. We would keep it alive through
> bold <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold> edits and
> talk page conversations, similar to our Coding conventions
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Coding_conventions/PHP> and
> other such guidelines that we maintain peer to peer and through
> consensus.
>
> The reason I've not simply labelled it as such already is because
> before today I found the document to be out of sync with our actual
> practices. I have made a number of changes with descriptive edit
> summaries to bring it in sync with what I percieve to be our best
> practices; based on how myself and other maintainers perform code
> review at large, and how we review new extensions prior to deployment.
>
> All are welcome to fix mistakes, raise questions/concerns on the
> talk page, on this thread. You're also welcome to message me
> directly anytime if you prefer.
>
> If you consider yourself familiar with our practices and/or lead and
> mentor other engineers, please take a minute to review the page and
> consider whether the items reflect your current understanding and
> judgement.
>
> --
> Timo Tijhof,
> Principal Engineer,
> Wikimedia Performance Team.
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