Hey everybody, tl;dr - How do we add 3rd party libs to core: composer, git submodules, or copying the code?
So I have a question to discuss concerning MW core that I was hoping to get some feedback on: what is our policy on including third-party libraries in core? To clarify, by policy I don't mean what factors do we take into account when deciding to include a library (although feel free to weigh in on that if you want to say something), but rather how one would go about doing it. Here are the possibilities: 1) Use Composer to install dependencies 2) Use git submodules to store a reference to the repository 3) Copy the code and add a note somewhere of where it came from (If I am missing an option, please enlighten me.) My opinion on the matter is that option 1 is probably the best, primarily because Composer was designed specifically for this purpose, and it is widely used and is unlikely to randomly disappear in the near future. Also, it makes the incorporation of these libraries trivial, since the autoloader will be automatically registered using Composer. However, the method is not without fault. A recent patch to core actually removed our composer.json file, in hopes of allowing MediaWiki sysadmins to make their own custom composer.json file so that extensions could be installed that way. Which is more important: better maintenance of core dependencies, or allowing easier extension installation? I don't know; that's for us to decide. I'm a bit conflicted on the matter because I really do want to make extension installation and management easier, but at the same time making sure the core itself is easy to use should probably be a higher priority. The next option is pretty much similar to Composer in that you have a reference to some external code that will be downloaded when told to do so by the user. However, it's different from Composer in a number of ways: 1) when packaging tarballs, the code has to be downloaded anyway since submodules are git-specific, and 2) we have to manage the autoloader manually. Not too bad. If we decide the Composer option is not viable, I think this would be a good alternative. I don't like the final option at all, but it seems to be our current approach. It's basically the same thing as git submodules except rather than having a clear reference to where the code came from and where we can update it, we have to add a README or something explaining it. Also, just to clarify, this is not an out-of-the-blue request for comment. I am currently considering whether we might want to replace our HttpFunctions file with the third-party Guzzle library, since the latter is very stable, much much more functional, and a lot easier to use. However, this is out-of-scope for the discussion, so if you have an opinion on whether doing this is a good/bad idea, please start another thread. *-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
