Comment by radarsat1

Interesting you say so, in one particular project this has become such a problem that I have indeed been thinking along those lines.. of breaking it up into more than one repository so that people can just build their own extensions and I would just maintain a kind of "kernel interface". I do think it's a useful way to go, but it does take some time to redesign with that in mind. It's hard to know when it's "time" to do it, because it's usually only after a project gets to a certain size and has some popularity that it becomes simultaneously difficult to (a) integrate external work and (b) to rewrite the project to make (a) easier. The only answer in some cases seems to be to start a parallel project, but then you're back to the problem of whether this gets any traction in the community, or is seen as "hostile" somehow.