[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] XWiki Core

Hi committers (and devs in general), I’m submitting to you this idea, to try to improve the xwiki open source project and to give it a new dynamism. I believe the topics discussed below are made even more important since we’re soon going to develop the notion of flavors in XWiki. Note that this proposal obsoletes the http://markmail.org/message/4hglttljiio5v2km proposal (i.e. the move of some extensions in the xwiki github organization), which itself was obsoleting http://markmail.org/message/ppw2slpgqou2ihai Issues to solve =============== * The scope of the code maintained by the XWiki Dev Team (== the xwiki github organization) is increasing but the team stays relatively small * The more stuff we move into the repos of the xwiki github organization, the less easy it is for non-“XWiki Dev Team” committers to participate and we want more contributions Proposed solution ================= Executive summary: * Reduce the scope of all the code located in the xwiki github organization by only keeping “core” modules * A “core" module is defined by being a generic transversal module (i.e. that can be used in lots of XWiki flavors, if not all). This is opposed to “vertical” modules which are modules specific of a usage of XWiki. ** Examples of “core" modules: logging module, configuration module, distribution wizard, statistics application, annotations, active installs, one base flavor (the “XWiki” flavor), etc ** Example of “vertical” modules: meeting manager application, blog application, FAQ application, flavors (except the base flavor), etc Some consequences: * We need a new location for several modules that would go out of the xwiki github organization repos * It would be good to separate sandbox extensions from 1st class extensions that are maintained and developed following best practices. We need some way to maintain the quality of important extensions Detailed Implementation: * The “xwiki” github organization’s description becomes “XWiki Core” (it’s too complex to rename the org to “xwiki-core” IMO) * “XWiki Dev Team” becomes the “XWiki Core Team” (and committers in there are called “XWiki Core Committers”). * “xwiki-contrib” is split into 2 github organizations (technically we rename it to “xwiki-contrib-sandbox”): ** “xwiki-contrib-sandbox” (or “xwiki-incubator”), where newly proposed extensions or abandoned extensions are located ** “xwiki-contrib-extensions”, where maintained extensions are located. * These 2 organizations are commonly referred to as “XWiki Contrib" * Same as now, anyone requesting a repo in xwiki-contrib-sandbox would be granted one and he/she’d be given write access to all repos in the xwiki-contrib-sandbox organization. * We define some rules for graduating from xwiki-contrib-sandbox to xwiki-contrib-extensions. For example: ** The extension should have been in xwiki-contrib-sandbox at least 6 months (this gives time to see if the extension is maintained during that time and will survive the test of time - most extensions will die in the first months) ** The extension should have had more than 2 releases and be published on extensions.xwiki.org(http://extensions.xwiki.org) with documentation ** The extension should work with the latest LTS version of XWiki + the latest stable version of XWiki (right now that would be 5.4.5 + 6.3). Note that if the extension has to use new API it’s ok that it doesn’t work on the latest LTS. ** Generally follow the practices defined at http://dev.xwiki.org * Each extension in xwiki-extensions has a leader/maintainer. He/she’s the one proposing to move the extension from xwiki-sandbox to xwiki-extensions. He/she’s responsible for ensuring that the extension gets regular releases and is maintained in general. He/she defines initially the list of committers in his email proposal for moving the extension. * We create a PMC (Project Management Committee) for XWiki Contrib, generally in charge of both xwiki-contrib-sandbox and xwiki-contrib-extensions (voting new extensions in xwiki-contrib-extensions, vote new PMC members, etc). To bootstrap it, I would send a mail on devs@ asking who’s interested to be part of this committee. I expect some core committers + some contrib committers to stand up. * Contrib extensions keep using the org.xwiki.contrib package name and groupid as currently defined at http://contrib.xwiki.org Note: The idea is that xwiki core is developed as a team maintaining all code in there, xwiki contrib is developed extension by extension (each extension is an island). This allows anyone to propose extensions in XWiki Contrib without the need for everyone to support them. WDYT? Thanks -Vincent