A few days ago I ran into some problems when trying to install
an extension via the extension manager. The problem was that
the pages of this extension require programming rights and
I have been doing the install as a local admin of a subwiki.
As the local admins have no programming rights the extension
got installed without error message, but then it failed
to work properly (of course).
I first thought about reporting a bug that users without programming
rights should have no access to the extension manager to avoid
these problems, but then I figured out that this might be too restrictive.
For example one does not need Programming rights to install a color theme;
there is not reason why a local admin should not be able to do that.
The problem is that one cannot distinguish in advance between
the two cases of an extension needing programming rights and one
not needing it.
So I wonder if it would be feasible to extend the ExtensionClass
with a flag "Requires Programming rights" or the like and then
any extensions found via the ExtensionManager will tell the Admin UI,
if they need Programming rights to be installed or not.
The UI then could check with the rights of the current user and inform
about the problem before installing.
Of course this creates a backward compatibility issue;
one has to treat a missing value for that flag somehow.
Maybe assuming that a missing flag means "no programming rights required"
is ok, because that way extensions without this flag will be handled exactly
the same as they are currently handled
However I wonder if I talk about a real problem here, or if this is
not really needed, but it is me doing something wrong. (E.g. is it
actually advisable to install an extension only on one local wiki,
and not on the complete farm?)
Any thoughts?
Clemens