This is information to help the Tiki community and other software communities to collaborate better together. Typically:
- software libraries that are
- included in Tiki
- or available via Packages
- or projects or online services with a certain level of interoperability with Tiki, via the WikiSuite project or otherwise.
Tiki is different
1st thing to know: Tiki is different. Yes really. So what you know from collaborating with other projects perhaps doesn't apply the same way. Each project is different, but Tiki is in a class of its own. 😊 Tiki is the Free / Libre / open Source with the most built-in features. So it's a huge project. But in fact, more than half the code in Tiki comes from upstream. Just one more reason why we should also collaborate efficiently 😊
Converging on one solution
To avoid https://pluginproblems.com/ and to offer better integration, security and performance, Tiki avoids feature and code duplication. And as such, only one library will be picked (as with anything, there can exceptions but this is the general principle). Our goal is that all features are built-in but optional. As such, before we commit to working with a library or project, there is an extensive analysis of all the options. We want to avoid having to change later on. Think: measure twice and cut once. An example of this is the selection of a new slideshow framework in Tiki19. There was a thoughtful discussion, which included taking into account project stats. These are the general criteria for picking projects: https://wikisuite.org/Component-criteria
Release schedule
- Tiki has a time-based, "Release early, Release often" approach with Long Term Support (LTS) versions, to balance the needs of stability and innovation. Please see: Versions. If possible, please take this into account in your development plans. The ideal scenario is that you release major versions the month before we do. We encourage you to think of the concept of Long Term Support (LTS) versions for your project.
Roadmap coordination
- When planning major changes or code inclusions, let's coordinate. For example, if you need to include a software library, please look at https://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/vendor_bundled/composer.json. Using the same code will make it easier to help each other, and develop a tight integration. If you find something better, please let us know what and why. This analysis is priceless. We want to know if we are missing out on innovations, and see if we can work with the current library to see if they can be extended this way.
Delivery mechanism
- We use Composer and Packagist. This is the ideal to include code in Tiki, but also in any other PHP project.
Semantic Versioning
- Please try to use Semantic Versioning so we can set it up to get automatic updates: https://semver.org/
Please make sure there are released versions on Packagist and not just "dev-master".
License
The usual mechanism is to bundle code in Tiki. Here are the license requirements: License
Upstream first
Tiki is resolutely "Upstream First", and contributes as much as possible to all included projets, as well as to other software components in WikiSuite and to the larger Free Software and Open Source community.
Wiki way software development
Tiki is old and big. But it is also very flexible and there many ways of Extending Tiki. Tiki has proven to be remarkably adaptive. It started in 2002 with PHP 4, and ever since, it has adapted to new versions of PHP, and dependencies in PHP and JS. In fact, almost all of the 125+ software libraries used in Tiki are at the latest version.
Tiki's feature depth and breadth is most amazing. This is the result of over 19 years of a community working together to innovate on a common code base. We can innovate quickly with an upgrade path because it's a collaborative community working on a common code base.
Bootstrap
If this is relevant to your project: The Tiki community has a lot of experience migrating from standard HTML to Bootstrap. If you'd like some help with this, please reach out to Marc Laporte.