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Update goal-posts regarding extension management

Open magdmartin opened this issue 11 months ago • 6 comments

Merge Better testing utilities for extension development with Better support for OpenRefine extensions @SoryRawyer @wetneb @Abbe98 let me know if it makes sense to merge those two goal post or if we should keep them separated.

magdmartin avatar May 14 '25 18:05 magdmartin

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netlify[bot] avatar May 14 '25 18:05 netlify[bot]

I wouldn't personally merge these as I imagine the work involved would be very different. The first point clearly needs work and consensus building in OpenRefine core. For the one about test-ability however, I would imagine that the vast majority of the work would happen outside of OpenRefine core.

Arguably, openrefine/CommonsExtension#157 and related PRs implemented a lot of the second goal post, so we should probably update the description.

Abbe98 avatar May 17 '25 16:05 Abbe98

The reason behind my approval is that I think the "better support for extensions" goal post will already involve multiple streams of work, and support for testing extensions falls under the umbrella of providing better overall support for extension developers. That said, I don't have a strong opinion on merging these two and I agree that it's possible for some of the current goal posts to grow so much as to become unwieldy.

SoryRawyer avatar May 27 '25 21:05 SoryRawyer

My opinion from the sidelines here.

Goal posts are goals. Think "We want to go to the moon." In order to accomplish that goal, everyone agrees that lots of work needs to be done. Specs written, new bolts designed for the new machines that will make the new fins for the new rocket.

I.E. Goal posts are SMALL summaries describing GIANT amounts of work.

I think as long as each small summary describes its goal like "Win WWII", etc. then issues and design docs can and should be used with labeling that shows they are a part of addressing some goal post. Example: "Addresses Recon Scoring part for goal: Make Recon Better"

Furthermore, GitHub has improved immensely and now has sub-issues. Let's ensure we use those to scope and gather the GIANT work needed for each single goal.

thadguidry avatar May 27 '25 23:05 thadguidry

Thanks for your input, Thad! Something I think would be useful is to have a tag on the forum for goal post-related threads. That way, it'd be easier to link conversations there with goal posts here. Hopefully that would make it easier to stay on top of the discussion resulting from the larger goals while allowing discussions to go deep on a particular facet of one goal post.

SoryRawyer avatar May 28 '25 13:05 SoryRawyer

Thanks @thadguidry for very clearly summarizing the intention behind goalpost.

@Abbe98 I updated the page to keep the two goals separate. Reading the details of the Better testing utilities for extension development, I think we can create separate goalposts for

  1. Better testing utilities for extension
  2. Better installation and management process. This is what the goal of "Better support for OpenRefine extensions" is about. Perhaps we can rename it to be more explicit, as it covers only extension installation.
  3. Better experience for developers, which requires consensus building within the developer group.
  4. Better documentation on how to write an extension. This can be an independent goal post or part of the better experience for developers mentioned above.

magdmartin avatar Jun 06 '25 14:06 magdmartin