The following bugs can be closed when we do this:

• bug 23985
• bug 30954

Done in Icd721011b40bb8d2c20aefa8b359a3e45413a07f.

Whatever broke, please fix it, don't remove remove a very useful feature from core in favour of a skin-specific extension, especially since many third-party wikis don't use the given skin at all, let alone the extension.

content hidden as private in Bugzilla

@Jack_Phoenix and @Isarra:

The reason I prefer not to fix it is because it should be removed from core. It
is one of those features that apparently various extensions want to
re-implement.

That alone is imho enough reason to justify removing it from core, because when
it is in core, the only way to properly re-implement it is to surpress the
default implementation in an inefficient way.

That doesn't mean the feature is useless, it means there are more ways to implement it. Yes, we should ship MediaWiki with a good implementation, and that is by default Vector's SimpleSearch (which is enabled by default as of the 1.20 bundle).

Providing a generic implementation like mediawiki.legacy.mwsuggest that is not
Vector-skin specific is perfectly justified, and I'm happy create a little
extension that does just that. People that don't use Vector could install that,
and it would do exactly what mwsuggest did in core.

But then it should still be removed from core so that people can have a choice
which implementation to install.

simplesearch happened because mwsuggest was out of date. And just as vector was written by the usability initiative to replace monobook with something more modern and usable simplesearch was created to replace mwsuggest.

So unless we have other extensions trying to provide this I do not believe that this is an edge feature we're going to have multiple extensions trying to provide.

I think simplesearch and it's improvements should be generalized and moved into core to replace mwsuggest.

I don't like the pattern of leaving core fundamental things every site should provide out of core. Especially when we go making usability improvements optional features.

So how about moving simplesearch into core and making it not Vector-specific?

Everybody can live with that? Then I'll do that right away as a dependent commit on the removal of this old code.

(In reply to comment #7)

So how about moving simplesearch into core and making it not Vector-specific?

Everybody can live with that? Then I'll do that right away as a dependent
commit on the removal of this old code.

Sure...

;) Comment #6, 3rd paragraph...

(In reply to comments #6 and #7)

Yes, that would be a reasonable fix, thank you.

Done in Icd721011b40bb8d2c20aefa8b359a3e45413a07f.

And removed from ext.vector in Ib8ebba170fbb813a28811c91a5ec6a40a18b318d.

I'll make merge requests for 1.20 tarball if you don't beat me.

I usually hold off pushing to refs/for/REL1_20 til the ref lands in master (as it may be amended until then).

(In reply to comment #11)

And removed from ext.vector in Ib8ebba170fbb813a28811c91a5ec6a40a18b318d.

Could you merge that to 1.20 since it and the previous one has been merged to master?

(In reply to comment #14)

(In reply to comment #11)

And removed from ext.vector in Ib8ebba170fbb813a28811c91a5ec6a40a18b318d.

Could you merge that to 1.20 since it and the previous one has been merged to
master?

The change in core has been backported (see Icd721011b40bb8d2c20aefa8b359a3e45413a07f).

The change in Vector extension has not been backported, but doesn't have to because the Vector has not been branched yet for 1.20, so it is automatically included in 1.20.

For the record, I'm getting this with LiquidThreads:
Uncaught Error: Unknown dependency: mediawiki.legacy.mwsuggest

Never mind, I was confused by this line on the source of the page:
mw.loader.load(["ext.liquidThreads","mediawiki.user","mediawiki.page.ready","mediawiki.page.watch.ajax","mediawiki.searchSuggest","ext.vector.collapsibleNav","ext.vector.collapsibleTabs","ext.vector.simpleSearch","ext.gadget.WatchlistMessages"], null, true);

It was just my copy of the vector extension which was outdated...