On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Daniel Kinzler <daniel(a)brightbyte.de> wrote:
Aran schrieb:
Hi I'm just wondering what the policy is with
regards to changes to
extension code in the svn in the case where the modification is
compatible only with recent versions. Shouldn't extensions be designed
to be as backward compatible as is practical rather than focussing
exclusively on supporting the current release?
Extensions are not required to be backwards compatible. It's nice if they are,
but they don't have to. Extensions are branched off along with the major
releases of MediaWiki, and versions on the branches should be compatible with
the respective version of mediawiki.
I would add that if someone is going to change an extension in a way
that they know is not backwards compatible, it is nice to write down
in the online documentation which was the last revision compatible
with the old Mediawiki version. That way someone using an old install
will be able to locate the previous, compatible version of the
extension if they need to.
For example then SpecialInterwiki extension [1] has versions that work
all the way back to Mediawiki 1.6, but it notes that changes around
1.11 and 1.12 are not backwards compatible and links to the old file
versions for users who do need that.
-Robert Rohde
[1]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpecialInterwiki