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Community Tech/Central repository for gadgets, templates and Lua modules/Notes

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Prelim analysis meeting, Dec 15th

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Need to set up shadow namespaces, where you can host things on other wikis. This ia deep architectural effort, Daniel Kinsler has been working on this.

This already works with Files hosted on Commons -- who worked on it? Brion Vibber, Erik Moeller? We can talk to them.

There's an RfC on mw.org (mw:Requests for comment/Shadow namespaces) from 2012, not concluded yet.

The shadow namespace would be hosted on Meta or another central wiki. When a user on X wiki tries to use a template that doesn't exist on the local wiki, it would be pulled from the central wiki.

This will probably be handled as three independent but related tasks; we'll have to choose one to start with.

Problem with cacheing -- if you change the gadget on central repo, how do you push that out to all the wikis using it?

What would the basic version be? To host them, wouldn't have to do anything special with the interface -- just one wiki designated as central repo. Gadgets could be designated shareable -- some would be just for Meta, some would be shareable and accessible on other wikis. Not nec for modules and templates.

What about i18n? Ideally, connect to translatewiki.

For templates: Version on the local wiki overrides the central version.

Templates is going to be esp complicated. It's the thing that people want the most. Also the thing that people need to be able to edit. There would have to be a big increase in global editor rights.

Templates can have dozens of levels of transclusion, this template could be in the middle of a long transclusion chain. With images, you don't have other things depending on the functionality of that image.

Even a minor change to a shared template would need a way of warning people on other wikis.

Could changes to centralized templates go through code review? Possible, but you can't go to all the local wikis to see if you've broken something.

Will code review require additional software, or is there a social/procedural solution? There's Extension:CodeReview for SVN -- see phab:T22153, mw:Extension:CodeReview, mw:Special:Code/MediaWiki/112758

This would be a huge task, scoping is going to be very important. First thing to figure out is shadow namespaces, then shareable gadgets.

Hosting gadgets on git: phab:T71445

This will need RfC, especially for code review.

Dec 17

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RobLa says Lego is going to talk about Shadow namespaces at the Dev Summit. phab:T115762 What do we need from that conversation?

Dev Summit, Jan 4

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Session notes at phab:T115762.

Phabricator, Feb 4

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Yuri posted an idea on Phab: "RFC: Sharing templates and modules between wikis - poor man's version" (phab:T122086). The idea is to create a bot which copies pages marked with {{AutoSync}} to the corresponding page on another wiki tagged with the AutoSync template. The central coordination would be handled through a Wikidata item. The bot would also copy the documentation.

This idea has potential, either as a helpful tool or a terrible mess; it's hard to say which right now. The team will do an assessment, and report back as part of the work for this wish.