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Peter Adams wrote:
I'm wrapping up my next version of Open Web Analytics for MediaWiki (http://www.openwebanalytics.com) and wanted to inquire about plans for creating an extension management special page where admins could activate and deactivate extensions without modifying localSettings.php.
Something like this would greatly reduce the technical skill required to add extensions into the mix but more importantly would provide extension developers with a very handy "install" action hook that could be used to do things like create dependent database tables, etc. Right now one needs to run an extension install script to create the necessary db tables and then link into localsettings.php.
I would recommend this, but haven't got round to working on it at the moment.
What I'd like to see is a few things on a few levels:
1) Hooks for the updaters (as run via update.php, etc) for enabled extensions to do their thang.
2) A friendlier post-install configuration / updater script to supplement (or replace) config/index.php
3) Autodiscovery information for extensions, so dropped-in extension directories can be automatically listed and selected by such a configuration utility.
This could be little XML files or little comments in the php file or whatever. It may be worth examining WordPress for comparison.
What I would _not_ like to see is a tool that tries to download or physically install extensions from a remote location. IMHO that's too unreliable, especially given the vast array of configurations which can make it absurdly hard to a) download or b) install files via a PHP web script.
Having some extension configuration more 'built in' to the wiki interface might also be useful or interesting, but may be a separate issue.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)