On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 12:06 AM, Jeroen De Dauw <jeroendedauw(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Finding a way to separate MW the library from MW the
application may be a
solution to this conflict. I don't think this
would be a trivial
project, but it doesn't seem impossible either.
That'd be fanatic if it happened for many other reasons as well. For all
intents and purposes it is a big caste in the sky though. I expect this to
not happen in the coming years, unless there is a big shift in opinion on
what constitutes good software design and architecture in the community.
The side effect is that it removed the ability to use Composer to
manage external components used by MW the library
which is Tyler's
proposed use case [0].
If the core community actually gets to a point where potential usage of
third party libraries via Composer is actually taken seriously, this will
indeed need to be tackled. I do not think we are quite there yet. For
instance, if we go down this road, getting a clone of MW will no longer be
sufficient to have your wiki run, as some libraries will first need to be
obtained. This forces change to very basic workflow. People who dislike
Composer will thus scream murder. Hence I tend to regard this as a moot
point for now. Though lets pretend this has already bee taken care off and
look at solutions to the technical problem.
One approach, that is a lot more feasible then making MediaWiki (partially)
library like, is to specify the MW dependencies somewhere else. Not in
composer.json. Then when you install MediaWiki, these dependencies get
added automatically to composer.json. And when you update it, new ones also
get added. In a way, this is similar to the generation of LocalSettings.
This is the approach I'd be investigating further if we actual where at a
point where a technical solution is needed.
No one has any major objections to composer *support*. People have
objections to composer being required, though, as many of us use git as our
method of installation and deployment and have very valid beliefs that
composer is inferior to git with submodules for a number of reasons.
I think the biggest obstacle so far is the half assed way things are
currently happening, from all fronts. There's no real support from
Wikimedia in this regard. There's a "composer is the right way of do it,
and you're an idiot for not using" attitude from some. There's also a
relatively large lack of understanding of how we can use this for both
extensions and MediaWiki all around.
Someone needs to actually take the reigns on this, or let's stop wasting
the list's time with it.
- Ryan