On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
What if it was written as an extension and moved to /extensions? Then we get the benefit of decoupling Math from the core software,
What benefit is this? It's not realistically decoupled from the core software unless it avoids using MediaWiki functions and classes. We have some code in core that deliberately does this, like IEContentAnalyzer.php and all of includes/normal/. Making something an extension per se doesn't change how tightly it's coupled with MediaWiki -- it's an orthogonal issue.
The only reasons I see to have extensions in trunk at all, instead of having everything in core, is that 1) it helps keep us honest about ensuring there are extension points for third parties to use, and 2) otherwise the tarball would be huge. Neither point argues for breaking things already in core out to extensions.