[Mediawiki-l] Extension manager

[Tim Starling]

Michael Daly wrote:
> Jan Steinman wrote:
> 
>> How about a single line in LocalSettings.php that includes a "don't  
>> touch me" file that is maintained only via the ExtensionManager?
> 
> Rather than mucking about excessively with LocalSettings.php and global 
> variables, consider using a more object-oriented approach and taking 
> advantage of Wiki.php.  It's there to help eliminate globals but isn't 
> used much yet.  If ExtensionManager is a proper class, you could have 
> Wiki.php instantiate a singleton and have it handle _all_ extension 
> stuff (including burying things like $wgAutoloadClasses, $wgSpecialPages 
> and $wgHooks handling for extensions) as well.
> 
> Mike

Wiki.php is only loaded on index.php calls. It's not universal to the
MediaWiki framework, and it does nothing to eliminate globals.

Extension loading should be done in Setup.php. A list of extensions should
be taken from the configuration (be that LocalSettings.php or some other
system). Capability lists can then be loaded, merged and cached. See this
post and the thread which follows it:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-July/024697.html

I don't see any need to treat extension selection differently to any other
type of configuration -- it all has to be optionally web-based sooner or
later.

-- Tim Starling