Wedge

To a point you're getting into the game of second-guessing the developer intent, and without any secondary information, it's hard to be sure.

Remember, the integration functions were originally for linking SMF to a third party app, so reset_pass makes sense there, because what you're doing is when a user changes their password in SMF, you're flagging a routine in A.N.Other system to update the same user's password there too.

I'd argue in that case, there shouldn't be a need for the value to be byref. Other instances, however, yes it should be a byref, particularly if it seems logical for a third party app to want to modify something before SMF has its wicked way with it.

We're sort of taking that idea and expanding on it, meaning that any original purpose is likely now somewhat irrelevant. For each hook, look at where it is, what local variables are applicable and make a judgement call as to whether it is reasonable and appropriate for third party code (of any kind) to be modifying that. reset_pass is one case it shouldn't be necessary, for example.

It's an interesting idea but not entirely practical,

mostly because there's already $context, and partly because hooks are there for a specific purpose, not just a convenient place in time; the actions hook for example is there specifically to be used with modifying the list of actions.

Really, pushing things to a 'global local' function is bad juju because really one thing I want to do is empty some stuff out of $context rather than fill it up more.

Faster, yes, more likely to collide with new local (temporary) variables but no real issue either way.

Sure :) Though a fair amount will be anticipation as well,

I have a litany of mods in mind that I'm constantly thinking... "how can I make that work without editing the code?" That's really my baseline when I'm thinking of the changes to make.

I'm actually fine with it here, because

I want to not only explain why things won't work but also the rationale behind the level of changes we're doing and the real benefits of hooks - while I'm actively going to be encouraging hooks, I want people to understand not only the 'how' but the 'why' as well. Remember, those modders who migrate from SMF are going to initially want to reuse what they've done before,

and while I'm not planning on pruning the package manager that far, I really don't want to encourage them to continue bad habits.

I want them to learn new ones, better ones, ones that will help them grow as developers, knowing as I do that most mod writers are not professional grade programmers.

$modSettings is for modifiable settings, it contains the contents of the admin panel's options that are forum wide (as opposed to $settings which is theme wide and $options which is user-centric) that are modifiable through the admin panel without editing any files, and is the general home of modification settings too.