On 12/11/2013 11:21 AM, Chad wrote:
Sending wiki edits to Gerrit for review? Absolutely not.
I'm totally cool with the idea of code review for Gadgets & so forth, just not using Gerrit. We considered it for Scribunto (and heck, I wrote half of a proof of concept) but shot it down because the idea totally sucked.
I think I agree with your conclusion, but based on my assumptions. It would be useful to know why you think it sucked.
Alright, not on Gerrit. Where?
Even if projects enjoy their freedom to use and modify their gadgets, I don't think anybody particularly enjoys having to copy (and eventually localize) gadgets found in other projects. Definitely nobody enjoys having to fix or re-sync those gadgets years later, when something breaks and editors complain in the local village pump.
The idea of global invocation and a central repository is being considered for templates [1]. Couldn't this be also an approach for gadgets? Still developed directly on top of MediaWiki, with or without mechanisms like flaggedrevs, but at least better coordinated and watched in a reference site. Then projects would be free to rely on those "upstream" gadgets directly, or to create their own forks, that could be still documented as such and be hosted in the central repository.
Many times the copy of gadgets across projects involves localization of strings that are hardcoded, an extra obstacle for anybody willing to re-sync gadgets. Separation of code and strings for proper localization would be an addition that all non-English projects would welcome as well, allowing automatic resync of the code without translation blockers.
In theory, mediawiki.org could be not only the central repository for extensions, but also for templates, gadgets, and bots. With a central catalog of software, quality assurance and user feedback could be better articulated. Wikimedia projects would benefit just as much as any MediaWiki instance out there, without stealing any freedom from them.
[1] Bug 39610 - Scribunto should support global module invocations ( https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39610