Hi Denny,
Comments below:
On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Denny Vrandečić
<denny.vrandecic(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
2013/8/26 Rob Lanphier <robla(a)wikimedia.org>
On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 8:03 AM, Denny Vrandečić
<denny.vrandecic(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
for Semantic MediaWiki we had this already listed
for a while here:
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Notes/SMW_and_Wikidata>
The list is not completely up-to-date, it reflects the previous package
structure.
It would be helpful if there was a wiki page that reflected the
current state of things. For MediaWiki core, we're trying to get into
the practice of having RFCs for changes of this magnitude, and
something of that level of rigor would be nice here too.
The current state is described here:
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase> , more specifically here:
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase#Packages_and_code_structure>
The new structure was described in Emails on Wikidata-tech, most recently
here:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/wikidata-tech@lists.wikimedia.org/msg00200.html>
We are indeed not yet using the RFC process, but I would prefer if we could
agree to move to this process in the future, as this particular discussion
is going on already a bit longer than what I would expect for a discussion
regarding the question about how to organize code.
This is not just about how we organize code. This is about how we
package our work. It's unusual for us to have extensions with hard
dependencies on other extensions, let alone the complicated hierarchy
you all have chosen. It may be ok to do that, but we should discuss
it before setting the precedent.
This gets exposed to end users via Special:Version:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version
Since MediaWiki administrators often use this as a means of
understanding how to configure their wikis "like Wikipedia", it would
be nice if we didn't clutter that page up with a lot of the internals
of our systems. Each of the links should point to a page that does a
good job of describing what the extension does, and the vast majority
of them do. Unfortunately, for most of the Wikidata extensions right
now, the pages are pretty much boilerplaite plus a one-liner in many
cases.
Rather than get too far into the implementation details of what your
extensions are doing, I think maybe I'll hold off until someone on my
team has more time to think about this and comment on it.
Rob