On Sat, 24 May 2014 21:12:26 +0200, Bartosz Dziewoński matma.rex@gmail.com wrote:
First of all, something we all agree on: let's murder skin autodiscovery. I'll submit patches to emit deprecation warnings if a skin using it is found (to master and 1.23 LTS release), and another patch that will remove it entirely (intended for MW 1.24 or MW 1.25). I will also convert the core skins not to use autodiscovery first. I'll keep them in 'skins/' for now, it'll be less disruptive in WMF environment and easy to change later if we decide to.
I filed a bug to track this: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=65748
And submitted patches that seem to do a complete job:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/135383/ (master) "Don't use autodiscovery for core skins" https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/135384/ (master) "Move core skins to separate directories" https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/135429/ (master) "Officially deprecate skin autodiscovery" https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/135427/ (REL1_23) "Officially deprecate skin autodiscovery" https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/135439/ (master, on hold) "Completely remove skin autodiscovery"
Reviews welcome. Especially the REL1_23 is a bit urgent, as the release is around the corner.
I will create a brief migration guide for creators and users of custom skins later this week (or next week), probably at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skin_autodiscovery.