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

[Christian Kuhn]

Hey,

On 02/09/2013 04:27 AM, 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. I would also like to have your feedback
> on the UI parts, the things you like and the things you don't like.

Reading the current feedback, most important things were raised already.

First, it seems that people in general agree on the current solution 
that the new em is stripped down to the important 'integrator' extension 
handling stuff, which is installing, de-installing, updating, fetching 
and configuring extensions, plus directly related things. This was our 
intention and it is great to see this is accepted in the wild.

One important missing feature was the 'update script' handling. This is 
now done and will be delivered with 6.0.2.

Other things like 'edit extension files' is not part of extension 
management itself and can be done way better by other extensions like 
t3quixplorer if that is *really* needed by people.

The TER upload is also missing, the implementation of this feature in 
extdeveval is not done, and I personally do not know anyone actually 
working on that at the moment. If anyone would like to step in, feel 
free to contact us, I'm sure we will find someone from or near the core 
team to support any efforts. Maybe we should raise an own thread to ask 
for help to get this done.


Other than that, there are still some issues with the new em, most of 
them also raised:

* It is good that the em does a lot of things automatically (like 
fetching dependencies on its own when installing extensions from TER), 
but it misses visual feedback sometimes to say for example "hey, I'm 
working for you now, please wait". This should be improved.

* At several points some more information should be given, like the one 
or the other flash message, maybe an information of an extensions 
version changelog before upgrading, maybe some information on 
dependencies or conflicts when installing from TER. Those things should 
only be given if it is important in the current instance. For example it 
*is* important that some extension can not be installed because of some 
conflict to another installed extension, but there is no additional 
information in just showing all possible conflicts.

* Codewise the em is still not as straight as it should be, from an 
architectural point of view the utility classes for example contain too 
much magic and cross-connections which makes some parts harder to follow 
and understand than it should be. The situation is still way better than 
before, but some refactoring can be done.

* Another feature of the old em was left out for the new one by 
intention: Show required database updates when installing something. 
Reason: This is clearly *not* a detail integrators should take care of, 
it should be done under the hood. If we are serious, nobody ever had a 
chance of not accepting the list of db changes anyway.

* Usability and styling should get more love. The search for extensions 
in TER is not as cool as it should be, a better feedback on important 
issues with current installed extensions (eg. pending security updates) 
would be nice. We should work together with the usability team to 
improve that in a way that it is in line with other backend usability 
concepts.


Regards
Christian