Needs to go through https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Review_queue

Care must be taken because on desktop we use the ACE editor, and they shouldn't clash.

• Create a tracking bug for the extension's deployment to Wikimedia wikis. This bug should only concern deployment itself, any sub-issues (that block deployment) should be separate bugs that are listed under "Blocked by" for this tracking bug.
• Create Extension: mediawiki.org page for developers and people who will install or configure the extension.
• Create Help:Extension: mediawiki.org page for the end user documentation. Cross-link it with the above.
• Request a project in Phabricator if none exists yet.
• Get the extension code in Gerrit.
• Show community support/desire for the extension to be deployed.
• Request (and respond to) a product review, if applicable
• Request (and respond to) a design review, if applicable.
• Open (and respond to) a Application Security Reviews ticket blocking this.
• Make sure the extension is automatically branched.

What are the advantages of using CodeMirror over ACE or Dot's syntax highlighter?
Can we agree on a standard please?

A few pieces of info:

• The CodeEditor extension uses the ACE engine, but currently doesn't support syntax highlighting for WikiText (as far as I know).
• The developers of the CodeEditor extension are considering switching from ACE to the CodeMirror engine (T50826).
• ACE only supports monospace fonts (https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/issues/460) which is a blocker for using it for article editing on many projects.
• According to JamesF, deployment of the new WikiText editor will be a very gradual process and will probably not be the default for a while yet.
• According to JamesF, syntax highlighing in the new WikiText editor has been prioritized as a "Nice to have", but won't be in the first deployment.
• Dot's syntax highlighter only supports changing the background color behind code (as it inserts a mirror div underneath the textarea). It doesn't support changing the display of the actual code itself, which is probably more useful.

Considering there are outstanding requests from both the English and German Wikipedias for syntax highlighting (T101246), and considering that we have an extension that can do that right now, and considering that the new WikiText editor is still a ways out, I would like to re-open this bug so that we can at least experiment more with CodeMirror (which may eventually be used by the new WikiText editor as well).

Would like to get some feedback on this from @Jdforrester-WMF.

@Krenair, @Qgil: Are all the things on that checklist above required for deploying to beta labs or just for deploying to production?

Probably wouldn't require wmf branches for a beta deployment... Don't know about the community consensus part though. I think the Help:Extension: page is probably unnecessary for both in this case, but you definitely need a security review to deploy it to either.

(I just realized that we have a mix of "Beta" and its requirements: Beta in MobileFrontend, Beta features, and Beta cluster. I'm not sure which applies here.)

If you just want to experiment, you can set up your own labs instance, there's no need to deploy on beta-labs.

In T95041#1520683, @Krenair wrote:

Probably wouldn't require wmf branches for a beta deployment... Don't know about the community consensus part though. I think the Help:Extension: page is probably unnecessary for both in this case, but you definitely need a security review to deploy it to either.

(offtopic-ish?) Right, wmf branch and community consensus not explicitly needed for Beta Cluster deploy. Security review is though.

I think community consensus is given at least on dewiki (syntaxhighlighting for wikitext is one of the top 20 wishes, see this page (in german) and T101246: Highlighted wikisyntax while editing articles [AOI].

In T95041#1520990, @Legoktm wrote:

If you just want to experiment

I can only speak for me, but I would see that to be more as an experiment. It could be used to fix T101246, accomplish one of the top 20 wishes of one of the biggest Wikipedia language version, and as a first step for other extensions to move to CodeMirror (e.g. CodeEditor). So it would make sense to look, how CodeMirror works in a production like environment, like beta labs, to test it and fix errors that may occur :)

I would suggest to mark "Show community support/desire for the extension to be deployed." as checked and would open a ticket for Application Security Reviews if no one is against it :)

Change 230782 had a related patch set uploaded (by Florianschmidtwelzow):
Add CodeMirror to auto-branched extensions

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/230782

Currently talking with Editing and Community Liaison teams about potential deployment.

at some point

I think, that the community (including myself) will have a problem with this, at some point, especially compared with:

According to JamesF, syntax highlighing in the new WikiText editor has been prioritized as a "Nice to have", but won't be in the first deployment.

But maybe I'm the only one who has a problem with this :)

In T95041#1558795, @kaldari wrote:

since the Editing team will be working on its own solution to syntax highlighting at some point).

Could James or you please provide links to related tasks, clearer plans, public roadmaps with dates?

@Aklapper: The only thing I know of is T104479, but perhaps @Jdforrester-WMF can provide more details.

Change 230782 abandoned by Florianschmidtwelzow:
Add CodeMirror to auto-branched extensions

Reason:
task declined

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/230782

In T95041#1561805, @kaldari wrote:

@Aklapper: The only thing I know of is T104479, but perhaps @Jdforrester-WMF can provide more details.

@Jdforrester-WMF: Yeah that would be welcome.

In T95041#2882104, @kaldari wrote:

There is now an actual new WikiText editor (in Beta), so we should investigate whether CodeMirror can be modified to support it.

I would be amazed if it could. I think re-opening this ticket is very premature.

I think re-opening this ticket is very premature.

@Jdforrester-WMF: This ticket isn't about deploying CodeMirror to production, just to the Beta Cluster for testing. If it turns out that CodeMirror isn't a viable option in a production environment it won't be worth investigating whether or not it can be adapted to work with the new WikiText editor. Plus this will let more people try it out and give feedback on it's strengths and weaknesses. Right now everyone's idea of syntax highlighting comes from a couple of gadgets that aren't that great.

Things should be deployed on beta cluster because they are planned to be deployed to production. If there are no plans to put it in production, you can create a separate labs instance to test it with.

In T95041#1519336, @kaldari wrote:

• The CodeEditor extension uses the ACE engine, but currently doesn't support syntax highlighting for WikiText (as far as I know).

Which apparently results in poor UX for code comments in non-Latin languages, so T50826: CodeEditor: Migrate from Ace to CodeMirror was a pretty popular item on the Developer Wishlist. Not sure if that fits into the scope of this extension.

Would probably be best to implement T50826 by including the CodeMirror library within the CodeEditor extension and switching out the back-end, rather than making the CodeEditor extension dependent on the CodeMirror extension. But once they are both using the CodeMirror library, it would make sense to consider merging them into 1 extension.