In XOOPS 2.6.0 alpha 2, some familiar services that were traditionally internal parts of the core were separated into modules.
Some examples are:
- avatars,
- comments, and
- notifications
The separated module approach achieves some important benefits:
- Modules can be updated independently.
- Modules can have private resources, such as:
- templates,
- configurations,
- maintenance pages.
- Modules can be omitted if not needed, saving some resources.
However, there are potential benefits to separation that were not realized:
- The service modules were not easily replaced with alternate implementations
- References using hard coded module names litter the entire system wherever a service is needed
- Each time the service is used, the calling code must check to see if module is installed
- Usage generally requires intimate knowledge of the service internals
