Item1050: Explanation at {ExtensionsRepositories} is not clear

I was struggling to understand the documentation:

Extensions Repositories Search List
Foswiki extension repositories are just Foswiki webs that are organised in the same way as the Plugins web on Foswiki.org. The 'Find more extensions' link above searches these repositories for installable extensions. To set up an extensions repository:

1. Create a Foswiki web to contain the repository
2. Copy the FastReport page from Foswiki:Extensions.FastReport to your new web
3. Set the WEBFORMS variable in WebPreferences to PackageForm

The page for each extension must have the Foswiki form PackageForm, and should have the packaged extension attached as a zip and/or tgz file.

This setting is a semicolon-separated list of repository specifications, each in the format: name=(listurl,puburl). For Extensions with the same name in both repositories, the one in the last repository will be chosen, so foswiki should be last for maximum compatibility. where:

• name is the symbolic name of the repository e.g. Foswiki.org
• listurl is the root of a view URL
• puburl is the root of a download URL

For example, twiki.org=(http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/,http://twiki.org/p/pub/Plugins/); foswiki.org=(http://foswiki.org/Extensions/,http://foswiki.org/pub/Extensions/);

So I wondered why this is, and why I would need it to download extensions.

From Will and Sven I got this motivation on IRC:

1. for testing. that is, you can test install of a plugin via configure, without publishing thru foswiki.org
2. for corporate environments, they could make "approved" versions of plugins available to foswikis within a company, after they have been audited
3. a foswiki "publisher" / extended service provider / consultant (whatever u want to call it), can provide a repostiory to his clients
4. to be able to install plugins from foswiki and twiki

-- ArthurClemens - 11 Feb 2009

Those are indeed the reasons I added it in the first place. I cleaned up the doc.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 06 Apr 2009