Requirements free version of Yii 2

[hiqsol]

I want to create console only yii2 based application.
And I don't want all those bower assets and other dependencies to be installed.

Don't you mind if I create (and maintain on Packagist) requirements free version of yii2 core code?
It's going to be exact copy of yiisoft/yii2-framework with only composer.json changed.
I've already tried: https://github.com/sol-hiqdev/bare-yii2
It works fine for me and could be useful for others.

Do you plan to split your framework to smaller parts for similar purposes?

[cebe]

we have a similar discussion already, could not find the issue so I will keep this open.
we will consider it for version 2.1.

[hiqsol]

Nice to hear it.
Hope you are about to cut core part out of the whole framework. And it seems to be a very good quality for the core to have no dependencies.

[klimov-paul]

See #10557 (comment)

I suppose this issue does not actually require stripping yii\web\* classes. Moving bower/asset depent widgets would be just enough here.

[klimov-paul]

Current yii2 repo should be split into several ones.
Note, that we should keep a balance regardless future amount of repositories.
I suppose only the code, which has external dependency like jquery should be put into a separated repo.

While using small codebase and many packages may look flexibile it has a drawbacks:

1. It is hard to navigate the code, which is split into several packages

2. Yii architecture is relatively simple and thus sometimes has cross references. For example \yii\db\Connection::$schemaCache existance makes a dependency to yii\caching\* classes, while there is a yii\caching\DbCache, which depends on \yii\db\Connection.

3. Fetching many packages from composer may produce installation performance degradation: the most expensive part of composer instalation is a resolving of the dependency tree, comparing requirements from different packages. The more packages are involved - the more time will be needed.

4. Composer generates an autoload by PSR for each package, remembering its root path. The more packages are installed - the more paths to remember and process. This may slow down the class autoloading.

Of course there should be some balance to be maintained here.

I can see no reason for exracting such packages like web, console or caching.
Except those classes, which have external dependencies, I suppose only yii\rest\* should be separated.

[klimov-paul]

I propose introduction of following new repositories:

1. yii2-jquery
   See Jquery dependency #9525 .
   Root package (yii2) should provide base implementations for yii\web\View, yii\widgets\ActiveForm and yii\grid\GridView, which should be independent of JQuery. While there should be a separated package, which provides View, ActiveForm, GridView and related classes with jQuery support.
   This package should be depended on jquery asset package, while yii2 stripped from such dependency.

2. yii2-pjax
yii\widgets\Pjax should be separated into a separated repo, which will be depended on yii2-jquery and PJax asset package.

3. yii2-maskedinput
yii\widgets\MaskedInput should be separated in the same way as Pjax.

4. yii2-rest
   REST implementation is worth to be extracted to the separated repo.
   Current yii\rest\* should be sugnificantly improved for the better REST support, which is demanded by modern applications.

We should also consider how to deal (if we will actuall) with following dependencies:

• ezyang/htmlpurifier - in general it can be not need for the particular application, however it is bound to Formatter. I am unsure what to do about this package.
• cebe/markdown - It is used at console controller. It seems it should be made optional - but it is hard to say
• bower-asset/punycode - unsure where it is used and thus, where it should be placed.

[klimov-paul]

New repositories may be created even now without waiting for yii2 2.1 version.

We can use Yii::$classMap to override usage of the old classes with the new ones from the particular package.

If we create new repositories beforehand, developers may participate in 2.1 development inside those smaller repos (very crucial for REST, for example) and, perhaps, even use them in thier project, while we will have an ability to reduce amount of issues at yii2 repo bug tracking list.

[hiqsol]

What do you (yii2 team) think about putting sources into src directory?

[samdark]

Agree with @klimov-paul package suggestions 1—4.

ezyang/htmlpurifier is required for sanitizing HTML which is part of most web apps. I don't think it should be separated.

cebe/markdown. Not sure about it. @cebe ?

bower-asset/punycode is used in clientside URL validation. Could be extracted to the same package providing clientside validation.

@hiqsol what's the benefit?

[hiqsol]

@samdark it is commonly (and very widely) used to separate source files from auxiliary files.
Benefit is clarity. Clean root and src dirs.