Thread:Extension talk:MobileFrontend/Issues with MobileFrontend and possible rewrite

John Du Hart has embarked on a rewrite of MobileFrontend with the primary aim of reducing the extension's Wikimedia-specific dependencies (am I getting that right, John?). It's currently in the Subversion repository as "MobileFrontend2" -- see his recent work.

Patrick Reilly, the current maintainer of MobileFrontend, disagrees with John (and with other MediaWiki developers, including Chad Horohoe) on the need for a rewrite. Some conversation on the topic:


 * ^demon: I just think we should refactor the current implementation not start fresh
 * <^demon> Well the current version gets deployed rather often.
 * <^demon> So forking it's not a bad idea.
 * ^demon: I'm not sure I follow?
 *  wmf-cenrtic MediaWiki stuff is evil :/
 * JeroenDeDauw: ha ha
 * <^demon> preilly: Well if it's getting majorly refactored to not be so wmf-centric, we don't want to make the current version unstable.
 * <^demon> So you can continue iterating & deploying.
 * ^demon: yeah, that makes sense
 * <^demon> JeroenDeDauw: Agreed. And when possible, it should be configured.
 * <^demon> *configurable
 * ^demon: yeah, totally
 * <^demon> Preferably not $wgIsWikimediaHack ;-)
 * ^demon: yeah

Sumana asked:
 * other than making the extension less Wikimedia-specific, what other improvements are you planning, johnduhart, and what are (as you see it) the flaws in the current implementation?

Patrick agreed:
 * So we should put together a concrete list of what it's missing in its current form and start to work from there

What would you put in that list? Please comment.