Hi folks,
Many of us met at the Amsterdam Hackathon to discuss architecture
guidelines (almost everyone with +2 in MediaWiki core, plus other
knowledgeable people), and generally about the need to have more
substantive conversations about MediaWiki architecture. It was a
really productive discussion, and had a number of outcomes:
1. RFC review: we agreed that RFCs need more diligent review. Brion
and Tim are planning to pull together the architects for regular
discussions (weekly? TBD) to at least touch all of the outstanding
RFCs, with the goal of clearing the current backlog of RFCs. If y'all
don't see substantial movement on this in a couple of weeks, please
point this out.
2. RFC use: right now, RFCs aren't used in many cases where they
should be. Assuming we get into a good flow with RFCs, we can then
reasonably expect people to actually write them when they're making
significant changes to the MediaWiki architecture.
3. Architecture guidelines: we now have a rough beginning draft of
architecture guidelines[2] we plan to use as guiding principles for
RFC review. This is a document that we plan to discuss on wiki in c2
wiki style[3]. Please participate! This is a living document, which
will be referenced in RFCs and responses to RFCs. We will use this
mailing list to discuss the more contentious issues and generally
ensure we continue to move forward refining this document.
4. A general agreement that we need to make sure that we have similar
conversations at every substantial gathering of +2 developers. For
example, we plan to figure something out for Wikimania.
We have raw notes from both days of meetings, available here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013/Architectural_princ…
Rob
[1]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_guidelines
[3] "c2 wiki style" is with inline comments similar to the c2 Design
Patterns wiki:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignPatterns