Change 722465 had a related patch set uploaded (by DannyS712; author: DannyS712):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Merge some modules into `ext.visualEditor.mwextensions`

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/722465

Although it is a (minor) performance improvement, we don't really want to do this, because it makes the code (a little) harder to maintain. We have some long dependency chains in the VisualEditor code, and it's easier to avoid mistakes when they're expressed as dependencies between ResourceLoader modules, than when they're maintained by carefully placing the files in the correct order.

Reducing the number of modules used by VisualEditor has came up in the past. I can't find where it was discussed (maybe it was some meeting where no one took notes… sorry), but I remember that we created T225842 as a possible approach to resolving the problem – reducing the module count without losing the clear dependencies.

In T291527#7374792, @matmarex wrote:

Although it is a (minor) performance improvement, we don't really want to do this, because it makes the code (a little) harder to maintain. We have some long dependency chains in the VisualEditor code, and it's easier to avoid mistakes when they're expressed as dependencies between ResourceLoader modules, than when they're maintained by carefully placing the files in the correct order.

Reducing the number of modules used by VisualEditor has came up in the past. I can't find where it was discussed (maybe it was some meeting where no one took notes… sorry), but I remember that we created T225842 as a possible approach to resolving the problem – reducing the module count without losing the clear dependencies.

This makes sense, and would be solved by private modules, but until then, each module adds to the registry size loaded on all pages, which I've been trying to help reduce in my free time. What if it were possible to add some inline documentation? Like have resource loader ignore any messages that start with @, and then in the module definition you can document

"mesages": [
	"@these messages are for the (feature) code",
	"message-one",
	"message-two",
	"@these messages are for the (other feature) code",
	"message-three",
	"message-four"
]

and similar for maybe scripts, styles, dependencies - would that help?

I mean, that's just the same thing with extra steps…

In T291527#7382886, @matmarex wrote:

I mean, that's just the same thing with extra steps…

My understanding of the issue was that there were concerns about making it harder to follow dependencies when its done via files in a certain order within the module definition, this would fix the potential confusion by allowing documentation while also reducing the performance impact of having so many modules