Hi all,
If you write, maintain or are otherwise active in development, and directly
or indirectly make use of MediaWiki, then you should subscribe to:
mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org
That is a mailing list that only brings important announcements for
developers that use MediaWiki as an API.
Note that this list is not limited to API as "api.php" but about MediaWiki as
a application programming interface (API) in general.
Subjects that have announcements on that list:
* Important changes in database schema (columns or tables added, removed or
changed in such a way that you should change your queries. Think for example
of the addition of rev_deleted, queries should most likely query for
rev_deleted=0 now).
* Changes in the JavaScript API (methods being deprecated or removed in the
mediawiki.js library etc. as well as upgrades of third-party libraries that
ship with MediaWiki, such as jQuery).
* Major changes to the HTML layout (such as the change for the sidebar id to
#mw-panel)
* Hooks in MediaWiki PHP. Mostly for extension developers. Changes or
deprecation of hooks.
* And last but not least, the api.php itself. All major changes.
===
Although time will learn how the list is used, to readers and writers of this
list:
"All subjects should clearly indicate what needs changing and when!"
For example "Vector skin sidebar html ID changes to '#mw-panel' in 1.17".
Also, whenever Wikimedia has scheduled a deployment of revision(s) or entire
branches that expose any change that was previously announced, a new mail
should be sent here to remind/summarize upcoming changes (since gadgets
should/can't be changed until the new version is deployed but new versions can
be prepared or tested in advance)
Hope to see you soon on mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org :)
Please reply-to to wikitech to keep discussions about this central.
--
Krinkle
With MediaWiki 1.18 now being deployed to WMF wikis (the final set of
wikis is slated to get 1.18 tonight starting at 23:00 UTC), I've heard
reports of people using list=categorymembers&cmnamespace=6 and getting
an empty result, even though there are files in the category. This is
a symptom of the cmnamespace workaround that was introduced about two
years ago.
However, we now have the cmtype parameter that can be used to replace
most uses of cmnamespace, and doesn't suffer from any of its flaws (no
nasty hacks to work around slow DB queries, no incomplete or empty
results):
To only list files, use &cmtype=file (previously &cmnamespace=6)
To only list subcategories, use &cmtype=subcat (previously &cmnamespace=14)
To only list 'normal' pages that aren't files or subcategories, use
&cmtype=page (previously
&cmnamespace=0|1|etc|everything|except|six|and|fourteen)
You can combine values for cmtype, e.g. &cmtype=file|subcat to list
both files and subcategories. The default value for cmtype is
file|subcat|page (i.e. list everything).
Roan
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