On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.org wrote:
when to move features out of core and into an extension or out of an extension and into core.
I don't think anyone's commented on the former (everyone's been talking about pushing in, not pulling out). IMO, the conditions for splitting something into an extension
A) Not a lot of people use it anyway (hard to gauge) B) It probably shouldn't have been in core in the first place (eg: AskSQL)
So far, the only successful case I can think of offhand for splitting an extension out was AskSQL, but it's a perfect example of what should happen.
2. When an extension is unable to do what it needs to do because it's dependent on a limited set of hooks, none of which quite do what it needs.
I think this also makes a good case for keeping something in core and not removing it. If we need to add 6 new hooks to keep it working, then it might be best to keep it in core (single purpose hooks are lame)
1. This is a very valid and important goal, but am unconvinced and merging extensions into core is the only way to achieve it. We can, for instance, take advantage the new installer that demon is working on which has the ability to automate the installation of extensions at setup-time.
Quick note on the installer. It only enables extensions that already reside in your extensions folder. Since we don't distribute any with the default package, this might not be terribly useful. More awesome is Jeroen's GSoC work on extension management. Something to look at post-1.17 branch though.
3. Because someone said so.
If enough people say so ;-)
-Chad