[development] Proposed Apocrypha

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Greg Knaddison <greg.knaddison at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
> <mail at webthatworks.it> wrote:
> > On Thu, 7 May 2009 09:23:48 -0500
> > Jeff Eaton <jeff at viapositiva.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Crell's Law: If an API must be use-case-optimized, make it
> >> swappable & tailor the default for cheap shared hosting. High-end
> >> sites can swap.
> >
> >> Eaton's Corollary: If an API is swappable, write two
> >> implementations. APIs with one test case are rarely flexible
> >> enough for the second.
> >
> > If you want to make stuff swappable start at least with 3
> > implementations otherwise 2 will just be a special case of 1.
>
> We have to temper the ideal with reality.  We have several swappable
> systems in Drupal (database, mail sending, caching, others?) and as
> far as I know only one of them has multiple backends in core
> (databases).  We are able to have multiple backend for databases, but
> it takes a lot of effort.  I doubt we have the capacity to create not
> just 2, but 3 implementations for all of the other swappable items in
> core.  There's also the question of baggage. Do we really want to
> merge SMTP [1] and Fastpath FSCache[2] into core?  Would that be a
> total improvement?  Would the additional complexity (usability
> decrease) be worth it just so we can satisfy a desire to properly test
> that APIs?
>

Moreover,

The whole idea of making it swappable is to avoid hacking core (and killing
kittens)
yet be able to customize things in new ways, without being limited by core's
strict
process and patch cycle.

Experimentation is much easier with swappables in contrib.

"Never underestimate the power of contrib ..."
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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