Manual talk:MediaWiki architecture

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 * Archive 1

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 * From IRC 11 Nov, discussion with Chad, Brian, Jonathan, Gabriel, & Sam:
 * Re configuration variables: "Placing configuration variables in the global namespace is mostly a legacy from older versions of PHP" why? Not really, it was just a really really crappy design decision years ago. It has little to do with "old php versions". I would imagine "config as globals" was more "lazy programming" and "what worked at the time."  But that's well before my time. -- Chad
 * We should mention that we used to over-depend on globals; see the category of global object variables. Chad's joke: "Nowadays we don't use global objects, we use singletons so we can put our heads in the sand and pretend we don't use globals :)"  Jonathan suggests we use this material: Manual:Globals are evil
 * Thanks. I've tweaked the text to reflect this. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia switched from CamelCase links to free links before MediaWiki was even created, so free links are the standard for internal links in MediaWiki. From the editors: did the switch have an impact on implementation (e.g., make the parser more complex, or make i18n harder)?  "MediaWiki was written in PHP4 originally, and there were classes in php4. They weren't as useful as php5+ classes, but they existed," says Chad.  Gabriel: "links aren't really the hard part of parsing... the impact is mostly cosmetic, although things like media links were probably easier to add with free links"
 * Thanks. I've removed that paragraph as the editors suggested. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * at the bottom of the caching section: "Add Constant database (cdb) for i18n messages, been using this for interwiki cache for ages" Chad says: "CDB files are just files with key -> value pairs. And they're way faster than db access or memcache.""
 * Thanks; added. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding the difficulty with regard to skins: Gabriel: "MonoBook was quite hard to modify because it pushed the CSS support of the browsers at the time really hard. Behind the scenes every version of IE had different css. took ~1 month to do the skin for FF and Opera, then a few months to fix it up for the various IE versions -- all down to IE5/mac.. so if you wanted to move something, you'd have to fix up the css for all the browsers too. now that those browsers are dead, things are easier.."
 * Thanks. I'll add a note about this. I'd love to know more about why it's difficult to build new skins, though. Someone suggested User:Dantman would know. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Dantman 14 Nov: If the author was talking about the piles of boilerplate that make it hard to make a skin... then that's gone... if you are thinking of a 1.18 context rather than a stable context... If the author was talking about the way we build skins with classes rather than normal templates, then that's still around. finlay: my experience browsing wikis with custom skins: they never upgrade for fear their custom skin breaks. thedj agreed.
 * Re: user permissions, robla said 14 Nov, depends on what they mean by "hierarchical". it's relatively flat, but you can at least add users to groups, and then give groups capabilities; it's not RBAC. finlay:  I would say it's flat from my experience. (although I may not be the intended answerer) since it's perm['group']['permissionkey'] = true; so permissionkey is 'flat' and group is just the recipient

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 * Very well put and provides a lot of clarity to start with. Thanks! dytrivedi 09:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I for one found it fascinating. Great work! Graham87 06:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Glad to head it! Thank you. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * ça se lit comme un roman ! GJ --Ofol 23:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Merci :) guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Globals are nasty. Mmmmkay?
^

We should probably have something about this...

Reedy 22:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Mentioned in the config paragraph. guillom 19:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)