[TYPO3-ect] News about XCLASSES?

[Elmar Hinz]

Michael Stucki wrote:
> Is the Extension Coordination Team really the right group to support any
> future work on the XCLASS principle?
> 
> In my opinion this supports exactly the opposit of our main goal:
> Coordination between extensions. This includes that changes should be sent
> back to the author of an extension instead of being forked with the help of
> an XCLASS.
> 
> I think the goal of us should be that no extensions use XCLASSes anymore,
> instead they are _only_ used by target users who want to quickly change a
> behaviour without modifying upstream files.
> 
> Just my two cents. I'm curious about other opinions.
> 
> - michael
> 

Hi Michael,

that is an interesting question. I think the answer is a question: For what 
purpose do you want to extend an extensions?


a) Is it to fix a bug?

Than it is a bad idea to build a new extension for that and you are right. 
Here better tools can support cooperation. You, Jan Hendrik, Andreas Otto 
etc. work on the subversion and trac stuff. That will hopefully help to a 
better integration of the work of extension developers.

ECT also supports community development of selected extensions like the cal 
extension to point people to a common place to best invest resources.


b) Is it to add new modules to an extension?

Often melting things into one extension simplyfies things. We melted 2 
educational extensions into one xajax tutor i.e. But I think coordination 
doesn't mean to melt everything into one extension. We don't need the tutor 
within the library extension itself, wich would only blow it up. Here 
cooperation means to reach the successfull interaction of extensions.

Even in customer projects I don't melt everthing into one extension, but 
deliver modules that add new features.

Here the XCLASS is a source of conflict. Flexible controllers, that can 
register new actions, give us one good solution.


Regards

Elmar