Put all friends related stuff into a plugin

[jdalsem]

Discussed in multiple tickets, i suggest we make some effort to move all friends related stuff (UI, access, related views, actions) all into a separate plugin.

Elgg 2.0 is a nice moment to do this. It could make the core more lightweight and allows Elgg to be better useful in communities where the friends concept is not needed (or even a burden).

[juho-jaakkola]

I'm afraid it would be extremely difficult to move everything into a plugin. But we could start by moving all the user facing features.

This was actually done once (by my ex-workmate), but reverted shortly after. I haven't yet searched for the reason.

[jdalsem]

What would be the difficult part?

[juho-jaakkola]

One issue is that should all plugins always check elgg_is_plugin_active('friends') before adding Friends to the filter menu? That doesn't seem right.

[juho-jaakkola]

This issue has a good summary: #3445

[jdalsem]

One issue is that should all plugins always check elgg_is_plugin_active('friends') before adding Friends to the filter menu? That doesn't seem right.

That is why i suggested #7873

[ewinslow]

@jdalsem is this something you still want to get to? I'm not sure I see the planning/persuading/testing/etc. happening this month.

[jdalsem]

One issue is that should all plugins always check elgg_is_plugin_active('friends') before adding Friends to the filter menu? That doesn't seem right.

That is why i suggested #7873

Still need some feedback on the above comment and ticket before i can proceed with this

[jdalsem]

Closing this as #7873 did not get anybody enthousiastic