Great news!
When can we expect this to be enabled?
Bryan
My will is to have it as soon as possible, but it doesn't only depend on us.
Raquel
From a software release and stability perspective,
whilst also trying to maximize speed, it
would probably ideally go down something
like this:
* Api Edit ongoing development in a branch (as is currently happening).
* MediaWiki 1.11 released. Does not include Api Edit, because it's a substantial new
feature
and therefore should be allowed sufficient time to stabilize and be thoroughly tested
before being included in a stable MediaWiki release.
* One week or so passes after 1.11 release so as to deal with any general post-release
issues
(e.g. people with different configurations find that things that work okay for us are
broken
for them)
* Api Edit deemed by Vodafone developers & Yuri to be ready for public consumption.
* General announcement sent to wikitech-l and this list, announcing the imminent merge of
Api Edit,
giving examples of how to use Api Edit, how to test it, things to test, reminder of how
to log
bugs in bugzilla under the "API" category in the event of finding problems,
pointers to
the documentation, pointers to this mailing list, and so forth.
* Perhaps one last pre-Api-edit scap / sync to servers.
* Api Edit merged into SVN trunk. I am assuming that the Vodafone folks are mostly
Mon-Friday
9-to-5 folks, and therefore the merge should probably happen on a Monday or a Tuesday,
rather
than a Thurs / Fri / Sat / Sun, so that they are accessible for a few days after the
merge.
* Other developers get a few days to play with the merged Api Edit on their SVN test
machines,
try it, and test it, etc. Presumably some bugs are logged, some bugs are fixed,
there's some
standard whinging about instead of doing A can it do B, etc.
* Assuming things are going okay with Api Edit, another scap could occur, and at this
point
Api Edit would be live on the Wikipedia. (And if things are going badly and major bugs
or
regressions are going unfixed, then it could be reverted, until those issues have been
resolved in the branch).
* Situation normal: Bugs logged, fixed, etc, as per normal, for a few months. Incremental
updates to Api Edit occur in mainline / trunk.
* Around 3 months after 1.11, MediaWiki 1.12 is released, which includes Api Edit, thus
making
it generally available to MediaWiki installations / upgrades in a stable release.
So:
* As a lower bound, the time between now and Api Edit being live on the Wikipedia is
around
3 weeks. That assumes that Api Edit is going to be considered ready one week or so
after
the release of 1.11 (I have no idea if that's plausible or not), and that everything
else
that comes before it in the above timeline goes smoothly.
* If Api Edit is not ready in the above timeframe, then the time it takes to get it to
that
stage must be factored in as well.
And of course, the above is just my personal 2 cents as the order in which I would like
things
to happen - but it may have no correlation whatsoever with what actually ends up happening
:-)
-- All the best,
Nick.