On 05/13/2015 02:48 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
In the next RFC meeting, we will discuss the following RFC:
- Improving extension management
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Improving_extension_management
The focus of the meeting was two aspects:
1. A way for the extension to specify which version(s) of MediaWiki core it worked with.
This was the focus of the majority of meeting. Basically, this would let an extension specify that a given commit (and thus, a given branch) worked with particular versions of core, using syntax like:
"supports": ">1.23<1.26"
Any syntax that Composer supports will work on the right.
There was a lot of support with this, with some desire for better communication, socialization, and documentation, and some debate over the key name. However, this was not unanimous. Outcome of this was "just submit a patch for it and we can continue the discussion in gerrit".
2. Tardist. Details at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ExtensionDistributor/tardist . There wasn't much discussion of this, but some support based on having read it.
There was also some big-picture debate on whether we should be implementing a packaging/dependency system and various concerns:
1. Can we use Composer unmodified, whereas the current proposal/already implemented decisions is to use Composer for libraries, and build our extension system on top of it?
General reason we haven't done this is that extensions are not libraries, and have MediaWiki-specific concerns (e.g update.php). However, there was some push-back in today's meeting about whether this distinction is valid.
2. Should we instead use (or auto-generate) something like Debian packages, even if we don't actually try to get it into Debian proper. This means having our own Debian repo. People pointed out that to even start getting serious about this we have to at least package latest MediaWiki and provide it in a public repo. We haven't done this so far, and the latest MW in even Debian unstable is 1.19.20+dfsg-2.3 (latest release is 1.24, 1.25 coming out Real Soon Now).
Also, if Debian packages are our solution for manging extensions and core, what about people on Red Hat, Windows, BSD, etc.?
3. In general, has enough research been done on the existing packaging and dependency ecosystem to see if we can leverage an existing system?
Matt Flaschen