[pmwiki-users] Re: recipes on core elements

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Thu Sep 1 14:51:18 CDT 2005


On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 03:19:07PM -0400, Radu wrote:
> I've asked already how I can make a recipe available for features 
> that slightly extend an existing core function, and the answer at the 
> time was oking my suggestion of 'just copy the function, modify it 
> and put it in a cookbook file'.
> 
> However, that requires potentially lots of maintainance. E.g., I 
> modified the simple tables function, and now there are changes to it, 
> the recipe has to be modified to reflect them. So a recipe creator 
> has to continuously monitor pmwiki releases and compare the bits they 
> modify.
> 
> Is that the only way to go, or am I missing something? If that's the 
> only way, I'm thinking about somehow automating (at least the 
> checking part of) the process.

Well, I don't have a good solution in general for stuff like this.
An automated check is probably a reasonable start.  PmWiki has *lots*
of hooks for customizing things (as evidenced by the large number
of Cookbook recipes), but anytime a recipe takes a different path
in core functionality there's always going to be some effort required
to keep things "in sync".

In general there are two priorities regarding interoperability 
of recipes and the core: first and most importantly, changes to the 
core should not cause existing recipes to stop functioning; second (and 
with lesser importance), existing recipes should be able to 
automatically take advantage of new features added to the core.

In this instance, the recipe didn't break with the latest changes
(i.e., we met the first priority) but the recipe now has to be updated
to make use of the new features (we didn't meet the second).
Just keeping things working is plenty hard; I'm not sure we can
ever completely solve the second issue without some serious
constraints on what admins and the core are allowed to do.  So,
I just think we'll stick with an evolutionary approach and
weather any bumps when they occur.

Pm




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