Make wp-content an svn external to official repositories

[johnjamesjacoby]

I would like for the wp-content directory to be a Subversion external to the official repositories, for a few reasons I'll try my best to clarify below:

• Since the wp-content directory can be relocated outside of WordPress, re/moving the bundled wp-content directory is an extra step. Leaving it be means committing and deploying an entire directory structure that's not utilized.
• Plugins included in core are their own projects with their own development schedules, update cycles, teams, and goals. It's important to the project (for a myriad of reasons that aren't exactly relevant to this ticket) that WordPress come with examples of how it can be extended, but the complexities (both developmental and occasionally politically) make the bundle less ideal than it used to be.
• Themes included in core are not supported or bundled in perpetuity, meaning Twenty Twelve and older are no longer included or updated as frequently. I had originally loved the idea of WordPress coming packaged with its own front-end legacy, but now feel maybe my perceived value wasn't worth the technical burden and archive size. Since core themes will be rotated out each year, and since themes have the same circumstances as plugins noted above, the themes directory sees even more activity than the plugins directory does.
• Official zips and downloads would still continue to come packaged with the same wp-content directory as usual, and maybe a "lean" version without it could also be provided.

Also (admittedly somewhat selfishly) I'd like the ability to:

svn export --force --ignore-externals https://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/ .

...and not use WordPress's bundled wp-content directory ever.

Yes, the results of this are easily scripted, and I've done that with a simple bash script. I think, though, this is more of a spiritual decision that is starting to be worth exploring – how flexible the project can be from core outwards to enable and embrace the application-platform aspect of WordPress by providing a totally vanilla codebase without its optional ingredients.

Just some ideas and thoughts. Please feel free to talk this idea out, prioritize, close, ignore, etc... And thanks y'all for taking the time to read this potentially silly suggestion though to the end.

[dd32]

Honestly, I just can't see this happening for a myriad of reasons - and doing something like this and keeping it through something like a moving-to-git scenario is going to be impossible.

I'm closing this out mostly as it's unreachable.