How should we embark upon new feature development?

Update July 11th:  We’re having a follow-up discussion in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. (#cli channel) next Tuesday, July 18th at 16:00 UTC (9 am PT, 12 pm ET). Our goal is to get to the point where we have a rough sense of the path forward.

The WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ package index is a directory of user-maintained commands. For a long while now, submissions have been put on hold. I’d like to unblock new feature development, but we first need to address the conundrum before us.

Originally, the package index was created as space for developers to share custom WP-CLI commands. A developer would write a new command, submit it to the index, and the command would be displayed on the website for others to discover. The command would also become installable through wp package install.

However, the package index suffered from the same problems that plague the WordPress pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party directory:

  • After a while, submitted packages are no longer actively maintained. Eventually, they become abandoned. Maintaining packages is commonly a solo-author activity when it needs to be a multi-author activity to be sustainable.
  • Over time, different implementations are submitted of the same feature. I actually ended up pausing acceptance of new packages when four of five submissions were near duplicates of existing packages.

Just like WordPress, the end-user experience is the priority for the WP-CLI project. It’s a bad user experience to have to choose from multiple poorly-maintained implementations of the same feature. It’s a much better user experience to have one high-quality, well-documented solution to a specific problem.

Not only that, but we’d much rather focus contributor effort towards maintaining common packages, rather than have spread amongst a number of one-off individual implementations. The maintenance burden of the command ecosystem is much easier to manage when somewhat centralized, than spread amongst numerous small projects.

Given what we know at the moment, our priorities are the following:

  • Provide an outstanding user experience.
  • Have a streamlined pipeline for adding needed functionality.
  • Be able to maintain and adopt packages to keep them available for the community.
  • Keep maintenance effort in check.
  • Encourage contributions in many forms.

What we want to avoid is any of the following:

  • Outdated / abandoned packages being endorsed to users.
  • Duplicated functionality causing confusion.
  • Maintainers being a bottleneck.

We were fortunate enough to be able to discuss this problem during the WordPress Community Summit. Brainstorming with other community members, we were able to identify three possible approaches so far:

A. No package index, but community-driven feature development.

Ideas are collected within the wp-cli/ideas repository or a similar tool. The ones that get the most traction or votes get included in the roadmap to build as new official packages.

Observations from the discussion:

  • Solves problems noted above by having WP-CLI be the sole source of endorsed packages.
  • Not practically feasible in terms of team effort.
  • Too slow to make progress and act on requirements.

B. Submission proposal that is coupled to precise quality and maintenance requirements.

To get included in the package index, you need not only ensure high quality but also commit to regular maintenance.

Observations from the discussion:

  • Adds strict procedures and requirements to the current package index.
  • Could include the provision that abandoning a package will cause it to be adopted by the WP-CLI project itself.
  • Growing team effort that will become problematic over time.

C. Two-tiered system with both an “official” index and a “community” index.

The “official” index is controlled and endorsed by the WP-CLI team, while the free-for-all “community” index will include a notice that use of these packages is at everyone’s own risk.

Observations from the discussion:

  • Completely open directory is valuable for innovation.
  • Submissions could default to the “community” index, and packages then need to submit a proposal to get “promoted” to the “official” one if they meet the requirements.
  • Adds cognitive overhead by having two sources of packages, with potentially two different mechanisms of installation.

None of these three approaches is a perfect fit for our priorities above, they just provide differing sets of benefits and drawbacks. In addition, we are quite sure there are other models out there that can potentially be adapted to meet our needs.

This is where we are hoping for valuable input from the community. There are some specific decisions we need to make:

  • What process should we follow for new feature development?
  • Is it possible to adapt the existing package index to help us achieve our priorities?
  • If yes, what form should it take?
  • If no, is there another mechanism might we employ?
  • What should we do with the pending submitted packages?

Have some perspective to share or process to suggest? Know of other projects that we can model our approach on? We’d appreciate your comment on this post, especially if it also includes pros, cons, expected maintenance burden effort, etc.

Please keep in mind that we may make a decision you don’t agree with. Our decision will be biased to reflect the priorities of the project.

We greatly welcome your input to the decision-making process, though, particularly to the degree that it’s respectful, introduces perspective we may not have considered, and represents a great deal of thought and consideration.

#cli