[Wikitech-l] MW 1.25 new extension registration - PHP constants

Hi there,

I'm the primary developer of the VIKI https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VIKI extension and its two companion extensions, VikiSemanticTitle https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VikiSemanticTitle and VikiTitleIcon https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VikiTitleIcon.

I thought I'd take a look at converting these three extensions to the new extension registration https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extension_registration format, but I ran into a problem. According to the documentation, the new extension registration does not support PHP constants https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extension_registration/Limitations.

I use a PHP constant to declare an explicit dependency on VIKI for VikiSemanticTitle and VikiTitleIcon. In my VIKI.php file, I declare:

*define( 'VIKIJS_VERSION', '1.3');*

And then in VikiSemanticTitle and VikiTitleIcon, I have a check that looks something like:

*if( !defined( 'VIKIJS_VERSION' ) ) {* * die('Error: The extension VikiSemanticTitle requires VIKI to be installed first.');* *}*

(As an aside, I also happen to use VIKIJS_VERSION as my version number, which I increment as I release new versions. But that's not as important.)

Because the new extension registration format doesn't support PHP constants, this no longer works, and I can't run VikiSemanticTitle and VikiTitleIcon alongside VIKI - the VIKIJS_VERSION constant is seemingly no longer defined, so any page load dies with the error message above.

If I can't use PHP constants anymore, does anyone have a better recommendation for declaring explicit dependencies? Or should I just avoid migrating the VIKI extensions to the new registration format?

Thanks,

-- Jason Ji jason.y.ji@gmail.com