Core Platform Team/Initiative/Unify Parsers-Phase 1/Initiative Description

Project Leads
Subbu Sastry

Current state
Implementing, currently porting Parsoid to PHP

Expected start
Started in FY1819 Q2

Summary
TBD

Significance and motivation
TBD

Milestones and major tasks

 * Prototyping: Early experiments with porting to evaluate feasibility of the port, potential performance issues, anticipated roadblocks, and expected difficulty.
 * Preparation: Fix the JS codebase to smoothen and simplify the porting process -- might include some significant code refactoring.
 * Porting: Port the Parsoid codebase to PHP including building interfaces to integrate Parsoid into MediaWiki core.
 * Testing & QA: Rigorous testing and performance tuning to establish production readiness of Parsoid/PHP.
 * Switchover: Switch existing clients to use Parsoid/PHP.
 * Switch off Parsoid/JS

Outcome
Reduce complexity in core

Baseline

 * Percentage of clients using Parsoid: 0%

Target

 * Percentage of clients using Parsoid: 100%

Methodology and rationale
This is a step in a larger project, as such the metric is about completing the porting process so we can get to the next phase of development. The best way to do this is to ensure no clients are using the JS version of Parsoid. The next phase will focus on the ultimate goal of moving to a single parser.

Time and resource estimate
9-12 months, completion is expected near end of FY1819 Q4 / early FY1920 Q1

3.5 FTE for the duration

Augmenting with 2+ FTE for 3 months

0.5 Engineering and Project Management for the duration

Dependencies
Build new HTTP API

Collaborators

 * Parsing Team
 * Core Platform
 * Performance
 * SRE

Stakeholders

 * Client teams: Web, VE, CX, Android, Growth (for Flow)
 * Editing community
 * Core Platform

Open questions
None (some for Phase 2)

Phabricator
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/parsoid-php/

We are not tracking porting of individual files in Phabricator. We are using the Parsoid-PHP Phabricator board for tracking everything that is not about mechanical porting of individual files in the codebas.

Plans and RFCs
The Long And Winding Road To Making Parsoid The Default MediaWiki Parser ( Slides Video )