On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Jeroen De Dauw <jeroended...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Hey, > > What if you want to use wikibase 1.23 and MyAbominationExtension 1.5 that > > requires an incompatible version of DataValues and MyAwesomeExtension 1.0 > > that requires an incompatible version of ValueView? > > > > If you have releases of certain software that have requirements that cannot > satisfied together, then you cannot install them together. That is a pretty > inherent property of incompatible software. > > Yes, but the only requirement right now is "Am I using the correct version of this extension with this version of MediaWiki?" and you're adding in a whole new set of incompatibilities. You're really not thinking of this from the perspective of the person using the software. > As a user, when I run into such a situation, what I want to know is which > versions of the software I am interested in I can install together. That > is, after being told the latest releases do not work together. Sounds like > we need some kind of package management :) In case of the components > created for Wikidata, we have been supporting Composer for a while now, > which is a great fit to our needs. > > "We" in this situation is Wikidata and not the developer community. In fact, there were a number of threads about composer with no consensus and a number of objections. So, what you're saying is that the Wikidata team has made a decision on behalf of the community? > I attempted to install Wikibase the other day and made a fun discovery. > > Installing it properly requires the following (12) extensions: > > > > That is somewhat inaccurate, and is misleading with regard to Wikibase > installation. Nevertheless, the concerns you bring up are certainly > relevant, and currently not really tackled well in the MediaWiki community. > That is to bad, as it encourages people to inappropriately bundle things > and throw re usability out of the window (plus causing a long list of other > problems). > > The solution to this isn't to sneak a requirement in without consensus.... Also, it's poor architecture to split things into a large number of small pieces in anticipation of reuse. It's better to split things apart when there's a need. Something that's being sidestepped here is that extensions are being used as a means to avoid getting things reviewed for core. Quite a few of these extensions should just be core functionality or they shouldn't exist. - Ryan _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
