Blacklight 4 v Blacklight Lite

Owned by Bill Branan
Jun 16, 2017
1 min read

Premise:
Blacklight is bundled into Hydra
any differences in the default app behavior can be overwritten by the hydra_head plugin, or in local over-rides
At a certain point, if a huge swathe of BL is being overwritten to get basic functionality in Hydra, then it might be worth exploring forking BL for a customized version

Current State
The extent of overwrites was relatively higher before the BL Rails3 upgrade and Hydra_head refactor
With the refactorings, the extent of overwrites should decline precipitously
Note also that Hydra gets a huge boost from using BL: large code base, active contributor base, steady stream of enhancements. For Hydra to fork and maintain its own BL code base would be an undesirable and potentially onerous burden that duplicates work that is already undertaken by the BL commmunity.

The best course of action may be to keep a weather eye on drift between the projects' use of BL, and for BL committers working with hydra to make a continuous effort to port back changes into BL core.

Action Items:

  • Don't fork Blacklight for Hydra
  • Continue to try and port necessary changes that would benefit Hydra back into BL as make sense for BL
  • After the BL & HH refactorings are complete, keep alert to the amount of overwriting that is necessary to make Hydra work. If it is extensive, reassess options