[TYPO3-dev] Your Input On: 6.x Extension Manager

[Michael]

On 09/02/13 14:27, Benjamin Mack wrote:

[...]
> So, as we want to improve this area for 6.1, I am eager to get your
> input on what should definitively get back in there (and why) and what
> should be placed somewhere else.

In my opinion, the question should *not* be: "What would you like to
see/have in the EM?" ("you" in the context of: we, the nerds who read
this dev-mailinglist).

I would look at the roles who use the EM, which are: integrators,
developers and administrators - and then think about their tasks.

Integrators are the main target group and they should be able to:
search/find extensions and easily "see" extension updates, choose if
they have or should install an ext or ext update, install and remove
extensions, configure installed ext, etc.

They do *not* upload extensions to the TER for example. This is a
developer's task and "upload to TER" is a feature I would not expect to
see in a LIVE environment (if you strictly separate your instances
between "dev", "test" and "live" or a similar staging concept).
Therefore, out-of-scope of the EM from my perspective. However, very
important, and the other responses in this thread already pointed this
out: in urgent need (e.g. as a feature of extdeval or so) :-)

Editing files, view file list (of extensions), updating ext_emconf, etc.
is a developer/admin task, too. However, sometimes it is useful for an
integrator to see which files are available and to review them (e.g.
templates or default TypoScript) but if the documentation has a certain
level of quality, this should not be required.

Speaking of "documentation": I would love to give integrators direct
access to extension manuals... *inside* their TYPO3 instance and for the
correct extension version (the currently installed version). No need to
search on docs.typo3.org or TER, no need to download OpenOffice or PDF
files, etc. but show the manual as HTML in TYPO3 with a click of a
button. With reST we made a big step forward and have a great foundation
in place for such a feature :-)

My opinion in short words: keep the EM as slim and streamlined as
possible, focus on integrators and their tasks - and keep everything
out of the EM, that should not be available in a "live" instance of
TYPO3. All developer/admin-related stuff should be provided by other
extensions (not mandatory to install, not installed/activated by
default). Integrators should have all tools/information by hand to make
well-informed decisions about an extension
(install/remove/update/configure and how to configure -> quick and easy
access to the manual).

Oh, one last thing: retrieving the extension list from TER. Maybe I
should double check what is possible and how the EM currently behaves,
but I was (negatively) surprised when the EM downloaded the extension
list automatically when you access the EM the first time (I would prefer
to control the download) and secondly, I always dreamed of a different
extensionlist download concept. For example, instead of downloading,
extracting and parsing a 10MB extensionlist.xml.gz file, maybe it's
achievable to split this into 4 or 6 smaller parts (maybe configurable)
and download them in a row. This would prevent timeouts as well as
server loads over long time. On the other hand, with modern server
hardware today, this becomes less an issue and also, making this dream
come true requires some significant changes on the TER side as well :-)


Cheers
Michael