Hi,
I am working on creating a Debian package (.deb file) for MediaWiki (MW) 1.25.1, for full details about my efforts to date see Ask Ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/q/629473/93125. See the latest version of MW that's available as a Debian package for Ubuntu at least is 1.19 which is fairly out of date (so out of date it's no longer even supported), so I felt I would update it. Keeping in mind, however, I am no expert programmer or web developer, my understanding of programming and web applications is that of a novice. I even had trouble getting MW to work on Ubuntu without resorting to using the Bitnami stack. After I get MW 1.25.1 as a Debian package working I plan on developing MW 1.23 (as it's the latest LTS release).
The biggest problem for me is that most guides (in fact all of them I've come across, at least) for developing Debian packages are written for packages that need to be built (usually using the `make` utility), unlike MW which just needs to be set up and configured on an Apache server.
If it is relevant I am running on 32 bit Ubuntu 15.04, hence my package needs to be built and able to work on this OS and platform.
Thanks for your time, Brenton
On 31/05/15 16:14, Brenton Horne wrote:
Hi,
I am working on creating a Debian package (.deb file) for MediaWiki (MW) 1.25.1, for full details about my efforts to date see Ask Ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/q/629473/93125. See the latest version of MW that's available as a Debian package for Ubuntu at least is 1.19 which is fairly out of date (so out of date it's no longer even supported), so I felt I would update it. Keeping in mind, however, I am no expert programmer or web developer, my understanding of programming and web applications is that of a novice. I even had trouble getting MW to work on Ubuntu without resorting to using the Bitnami stack. After I get MW 1.25.1 as a Debian package working I plan on developing MW 1.23 (as it's the latest LTS release).
The biggest problem for me is that most guides (in fact all of them I've come across, at least) for developing Debian packages are written for packages that need to be built (usually using the `make` utility), unlike MW which just needs to be set up and configured on an Apache server.
If it is relevant I am running on 32 bit Ubuntu 15.04, hence my package needs to be built and able to work on this OS and platform.
Thanks for your time, Brenton
Have you looked as a basis how the mediawiki package does it?
How the existing 1.19 version does it? Yes, users @ Ask Ubuntu suggested I do this, but as I am not really a developer or programmer I didn't really understand what I found by extracting the Debian package. I asked them for help but suffice it to say they weren't exactly helpful.
On 01/06/15 00:57, Platonides wrote:
On 31/05/15 16:14, Brenton Horne wrote:
Hi,
I am working on creating a Debian package (.deb file) for MediaWiki (MW) 1.25.1, for full details about my efforts to date see Ask Ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/q/629473/93125. See the latest version of MW that's available as a Debian package for Ubuntu at least is 1.19 which is fairly out of date (so out of date it's no longer even supported), so I felt I would update it. Keeping in mind, however, I am no expert programmer or web developer, my understanding of programming and web applications is that of a novice. I even had trouble getting MW to work on Ubuntu without resorting to using the Bitnami stack. After I get MW 1.25.1 as a Debian package working I plan on developing MW 1.23 (as it's the latest LTS release).
The biggest problem for me is that most guides (in fact all of them I've come across, at least) for developing Debian packages are written for packages that need to be built (usually using the `make` utility), unlike MW which just needs to be set up and configured on an Apache server.
If it is relevant I am running on 32 bit Ubuntu 15.04, hence my package needs to be built and able to work on this OS and platform.
Thanks for your time, Brenton
Have you looked as a basis how the mediawiki package does it?
MediaWiki-distributors mailing list MediaWiki-distributors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-distributors
Brenton Horne brentonhorne77@gmail.com wrote:
How the existing 1.19 version does it? Yes, users @ Ask Ubuntu suggested I do this, but as I am not really a developer or programmer I didn't really understand what I found by extracting the Debian package. I asked them for help but suffice it to say they weren't exactly helpful.
[...]
Packaging for Debian/Ubuntu (often) is very non-trivial. If you don't understand the existing 1.19 package, you will have to invest a *lot* of hours to package MediaWiki.
There is a dedicated mailing list for packaging MediaWiki for Debian/Ubuntu at http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-mediawiki-devel, and https://wiki.debian.org/MediaWiki has some general information.
Tim
Hi,
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 9:54 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
$ svn clone svn://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-mediawiki/mediawiki/trunk/ mediawiki-deb
do you have some kind of local alias set up? e.g. svn='git svn'?
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
There is a dedicated mailing list for packaging MediaWiki for Debian/Ubuntu at http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-mediawiki-devel, and https://wiki.debian.org/MediaWiki has some general information.
+1
Definitely better to package first for Debian and following Debian practices. Then Ubuntu should be able to copy that pretty easily (depending on timing).
See also: * http://mentors.debian.net/ * https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/
-Jeremy
On 31 May 2015 at 23:02, Jeremy Baron jeremy@tuxmachine.com wrote:
Definitely better to package first for Debian and following Debian practices. Then Ubuntu should be able to copy that pretty easily (depending on timing).
I believe the Debian MediaWIki maintainer has also quit, so the 1.19 in Debian won't be upgraded to 1.23 in the foreseeable future unless someone steps up and takes over.
(The mediawiki.org pages on Debian/Ubuntu should probably be updated. Though I run a pile of MW on Ubuntu from tarball and it's pretty clean and straightforward.)
- d.
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 10:17 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe the Debian MediaWIki maintainer has also quit
At first I thought you meant quit maintaining mediawiki, looked at archives a bit and now I guess you mean quit Debian altogether.
mediawiki packaging wasn't a single person working alone and still shouldn't be.
so the 1.19 in Debian won't be upgraded to 1.23 in the foreseeable future unless someone steps up and takes over.
Anyway, Debian stable ("jessie") was just released (~5 weeks ago) so we have plenty of time for someone to get involved with MediaWiki packaging and get changes into the next release. (even someone without prior Debian experience)
Debian is somewhat open to meeting demand but also some things don't get done unless you do the work yourself. If Debian releases are too slow for you, imagine there could be a future with more options a la http://mozilla.debian.net/. (e.g. latest LTS, wmf branches, latest stable in addition to whichever LTS is currently in Debian stable/testing)
Brenton, please see the links in the last few mails if you want to work on this. (and let us know how it goes with Debian mentors)
-Jeremy
Jeremy Baron writes:
On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 9:54 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
$ svn clone svn://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-mediawiki/mediawiki/trunk/ mediawiki-deb
do you have some kind of local alias set up? e.g. svn='git svn'?
I don't have a local alias. I thought I had typed "git svn". I should have proofread more carefully.
Mark.
Brenton Horne writes:
How the existing 1.19 version does it? Yes, users @ Ask Ubuntu suggested I do this, but as I am not really a developer or programmer I didn't really understand what I found by extracting the Debian package. I asked them for help but suffice it to say they weren't exactly helpful.
So, I've done several debian packages in the past. As a sysadmin, I would prefer a packaged piece of software to an unpackaged one and even created my own packages to keep the root file system "clean" (from unpackaged software).
The first thing to try to get the source for a Debian package, is:
apt-get source PACKAGE-NAME
For mediawiki this results in a directory (mediawiki-1.19.20+dfsg) which is created from the debian.tar.?? and .orig.tar.?? files that this downloads.
Look in mediawiki-1.19.20+dfsg/debian/rules for the shell file (a makefile in this case) that creates the package. To use this file to create a package you would run "debuild" in the top-level (mediawiki-1.19.20+dfsg) directory. It will probably complain about build dependencies (these are listed in the first stanza of debian/control), so to install those, use "apt-get build-dep mediawiki".
You'll modify the debian/rules file as well as the debian/control file to build a package that can be used for an updated version of mediawiki.
If you want to contribute your changes back to Debian, you'll probably want to use the VCS repository. This was printed out when you ran "apt-get source ..." but I've outlined an alternative method here:
To get the source for any debian package, go to http://packages.debian.org/PACKAGE-NAME
This will take you to a page that list the possible packages. Following on the one for sid (unstable), we'll end up on this page (when we use mediawiki for PACKAGE-NAME): https://packages.debian.org/sid/mediawiki
On the right hand side of that page, you can see a link to "Developer Information (PTS)". Follow it and you'll get https://packages.qa.debian.org/m/mediawiki.html
Here, we can see that the VCS link points to a Subversion repository: svn://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-mediawiki/mediawiki/trunk/
Since I've grown to appreciate git, I have git-svn installed for just such a circumstance and I can get the SVN repo and all its history with the following command:
$ svn clone svn://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-mediawiki/mediawiki/trunk/ mediawiki-deb
This creates a directory called mediawiki-deb directory with a debian subdirectory.
In mediawiki-deb directory, you can use "debuild" to create the package(s), providing you have all the dependencies listed on the "Build-Depends:" line.
The only thing left is the source package. To get that, you can use "apt-get source" from above.
Let me know if I can be of further help. I'm not a Debian Developer, but I know a bit about package creation.
Mark.
-- Mark A. Hershberger NicheWork LLC 717-271-1084
mediawiki-distributors@lists.wikimedia.org