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? If there is a conflict in this regard what's the best solution? is it to wrap the new change into a conditional block based on $wgVersion?

Hoi, Some extensions are backwards compatible however and some are not. Given that there are plenty of people and orangisations using stable versions of MediaWiki, how do they know and how are they to know ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/2/21 Daniel Kinzler <daniel(a)brightbyte.de>

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Daniel Kinzler <daniel(a)brightbyte.de> wrote: 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