Re: [xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] XWiki Flavors

Hi, XWiki Flavors are a set of predefined extensions having a specific use case in mind. XWiki Flavors can be considered specializations of XWiki instances suited for different purposes like public websites, intranets, content sharing, project management, community status, business intelligence, etc. Scenario: You want to install XWiki. The installer will propose different 'flavors' and will install automatically all required extensions. This way you will have a product close to your initial needs. You can later refine it by installing / uninstalling other extensions. So when I first thought about the process of installing a Flavor I imagined that I could customize what I wanted from the Flavor and select just the things I need. Actually for me Flavors were like categories with subcategories, and more of a classification system, than a packaging one.

Also another difference in my vision is that I had a Base Package that contains the common denominator for all Flavors. The Base Package should contain basic mechanics for managing content and users. Selecting no flavor will still result in having basic wiki features (page creation, attachments, history, users, etc.). After some discussions with Eduard I understood that Flavors could be defined as extensions and they could contain just a list of dependencies on other extensions. The Extension Manager will install the 'exact' list it gets from the definition without the ability to exclude some dependencies.

I've watched the 'recent' mails about XWiki Flavors [1] [2] [3] [4] and for me the conclusion is clear: we will never agree on what starting features are the best and that will solve everybody's problems. But that is ok and normal and the strength of XWiki is it's extensibility. So the next idea was to have a Flavor Creator that will allow users to create their own collections of extensions. This collection should be then published to extensions.xwiki.org and could appear in the installer list as suggestions.