Symphony.

This is really a general question for everyone to mull over, but is aimed at the working group mainly.

As we're making a difference with the extensions like; how they're are stored, searched, meta is stored etc etc, I think it's time we looked at the utilities.

These are very useful little things, that IMO require versioning too, so that users can fork them, make changes etc etc.

As we're making a big reliance on Github for extension developers, why not do the same for utility developers, and use Gist to store them? Some devs already do this, but it makes more sense to me to do this for all of the active utilities, and any others, we can move to Symphonists too, on Gist.

I also think we could do with making meta xml for these too, or is that an idea too far?

This is an open discussion.... Go!

gist.github.com/xpathr

BTW: there are plans to create a site similar to symphonyextensions.com specifically suited for utilities. Like you said, a gist is the best place to store utilities and furthermore they could be tested with xpathr, so hopefully each utility will provide a test case to make it even easier for developers to implement.

That's great. How did I miss the utilities website idea?

Guess I'll have to move my utilities from git to gist then.

Oh, no I think we should be able to cater for either in any future venture we build, as long as they're version controlled...

I really value having them as a full repo rather than a gist, namely Form Controls where it's so useful to have an issue tracker, pull requests and a visible readme for documentation. I'm not convinced we need a full XML file to document a utility since most aren't as complex as this.

Some previous talk about documenting utilities and their metadata: New XSLT Utilities repository .

+1 for full repositories over Gists.

Either way I'm happy, would it be better to bake them into the symphonyextensions site instead of another satellite?

They technically are extending Symphony.

XSLT utility is not a Symphony-specific concept, and my hope is not to treat it as such. It would be better to have a dedicated site that the general XSLT community can take advantage of.

The idea that I've been throwing around with Marco is to have xpathr.com list utilities, in addition to the current pastbin/pastie functionality. On the same site, you can browse a list of utilities and then optionally load it up through the current code sandbox system to play around with.

Perhaps certain utilities will be tagged as Symphony-specific, which could be a way to indirectly promote Symphony.

I also hope that any central repository won't be Symphony-specific. Anything to raise the profile of XSLT as it stands now is a great thing, and there is the opportunity for those that get on board and understand the strengths of XSLT will easily continue on to Symphony itself.

I've had many discussions with others in the field, and a common consensus seems to be that XSLT is the one thing that keeps the learning curve of Symphony steeper than most other CMSs. Anything to lower that bar is a good thing in my book.

it's so useful to have an issue tracker, pull requests and a visible readme for documentation

Good point, xpathr should support full repos too.

I have been thinking for a while that it should be possible for utilities to be provided by extensions, so that Form Controls could be a repo with an extension.meta.xml which a developer installs. In this instance, it could be a new extension type on the Symphony Extensions site.

But I totally agree with, and support the idea, that XSLT utilities (snippets? helpers?) should have visibility outside of the Symphony ecosystem.

I like the idea of raising awareness for XSLT in the wider community, god knows it's needed, but I have to say on a side note, I'm really not happy about splitting all of this out to smaller sites, it just doesn't seem like it will work.

All the smaller sites will be part of the Symphony Network, the idea is to have unifying top bar that link through to other network sites.

I'd like a seperate Utilities (is 'snippets' a better term?) website as long as, as Allen explains, there is not too much of a disconnect with the Symphony network.

I'd love these snippets to be available as full-on Git repositories: this makes a lot of things so much better. Wiki's, Issues, Pull Requests, etc…