Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Currently, core skins are located in the skins/ directory, while for user-provided skins two systems exist:

1) Put into the skins/ directory (cf. documentation at https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Manual:Skinning&oldid=605468#File_Locations)

2) Put into the extensions/ directory (cf. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/extensions/skins.git;a=tree;hb=df496d1f4dff27eed0bf44cab5c4f2377dfe5377)

It would be reasonable to have a unified approach which is suggested to all extension developers.

I think, it would be reasonable to have only core skins in skins directory and all other skins in extensions directory, i.e., variant 2. This would have the following implications:

a) New skins have to be registered like any other extenison, i.e., require_once(...) in LocalSettings.php

b) Skins can be activated/deactivated by the installer

c) Skin-extensions can be distributed like any other extension

d) You have a reasonable file structure

/extension/foo/Foo.php
/extension/foo/Foo.class.php
/extension/foo/bar.css
/extension/foo/...

and NOT

skin/Foo.php
skin/Foo.deps.php
skin/foo/bar.css
skin/foo/...

which somehow does not look well-organized

e) Skin-extensions can provide everything an extension can provide, like credits or additional preferences

f) The skinning system does not have to look for available skins in the filesystem, as core skins are known to core anyway and other skins provide their own $wgValidSkinNames['Foo'] = 'Foo';