Excerpt from the blog post:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/27/request-for-proposals-mediawiki-relea…
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Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation started to share the
responsibility[0] of the long term management of the MediaWiki software
project with the wider community. We are continuing the process with a
second Request for Proposals[1] to manage the third-party releases of
MediaWiki (PDF[2]).
The process for this RFP is a community-involved one. There is a
three-week period for organizations to prepare and submit their
proposals, after which the community can comment on and ask questions of
the proposers. The Wikimedia Foundation will take all of this feedback
into account when making the final decision for who will lead the
release management of MediaWiki for the next year.
The deadline for proposals is June 13.
Please do get involved if you are interested in the future of MediaWiki!
Greg
[0] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/21/request-for-proposals-mediawiki-relea…
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_Management_RFP
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki_Release_Request_For_Propo…
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| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hi there,
this is a discussion happening on wikitech-l at the moment. I think this is also of interest to all the mediawiki users out there ;) Please share your thoughts!
Best,
Markus
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Gabriel Wicke
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Juni 2014 20:48
An: Wikimedia developers
Betreff: [Wikitech-l] How to make MediaWiki easier to install: use cases
In the current discussion about git submodules vs. composer there are several different underlying assumptions about the user's situation. I think it would help the discussion to clarify which use cases we are dealing with.
Here is an attempt:
1) Shared hosting without shell. The user uploads code with (s)ftp, and can't install anything globally.
2) Shared hosting with non-root shell and git installed. The user can use git directly on the server, but can't install anything globally without root. They can manually download composer to their home directory.
3) Root on a (virtual) server. The user can install packages, and do any of the above.
The git submodules vs. composer discussion seems to focus on case 2). Case
1) could be addressed by providing a 'bundle' tar file with all dependencies that can be uploaded via (s)ftp. In case 2) composer or git can be used on the server to fetch dependencies separately.
When using git, it might be worth considering Parsoid's method of making the core repository a submodule of a 'core-deploy' repository which has all dependencies, rather than making the dependencies a submodule of core. This avoids issues with git complaining about dirty submodules in the common case of updating core often.
In case 3) the user has a full packaging system at their disposal, which means that it is theoretically possible to set up a fully-featured MediaWiki system with a few commands. So far we don't have any special support for this case (we expect users to follow the manual tarball setup), which made sense in the past as folks running their own server were fairly rare.
Many of our users are starting to take advantage of cheap virtual machines though, which are now widely available at a price point comparable to shared hosting. For this reason I think that we should put more effort into supporting case 3), for example by providing good Debian packaging which lets you do "apt-get install mediawiki-full" and get a MediaWiki install with caching, VisualEditor and so on. There are also other benefits here beyond the initial install, like automatic security updates with unattended-upgrades.
So far we don't have a good idea of how common the different use cases are, and how this distribution is changing. I think that we should try to get this information so that we can have a more informed debate.
Gabriel
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Hello everyone,
I am happy to announce the availability of the first stable release of the new MediaWiki 1.23 release series.
MediaWiki 1.23 is a large release that contains many new features and bug fixes. This is a summary of the major changes of interest to users. You can consult the RELEASE-NOTES-1.23 file for the full list of changes in this version.
This is a Long Term Support release (LTS) and will be supported until May 2017.
Our thanks to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki by testing the release candidates and submitting bug reports.
== What's new? ==
* MediaWiki 1.23 includes all changes released in the smaller 1.23wmfX software deployments to Wikimedia sites.
=== Skin autodiscovery deprecated ===
Skin autodiscovery, the legacy skin installation mechanism used by MediaWiki since very early versions (around 2004), has been officially deprecated and will be removed in MediaWiki 1.25.
* MediaWiki 1.23 will emit warnings in production if a skin using the deprecated mechanism is found.
* See Manual:Skin autodiscovery for more information and a migration guide for site admins and skin developers.
=== Notifications ===
With 1.23, MediaWiki starts to behave more like a modern website as regards notifications, to keep the editors of your wiki engaged and always up to date about what interests them. This used to require several custom settings.
* (bug 45020) Make preferences "Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist" and "pages and files I edit" true by default.
* (bug 45022) Make preference "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" true by default.
* (bug 49719) Watch user page and user talk page by default.
This will allow your new users to immediately start benefiting from the watchlist and email notification features, without needing to first read all the docs to find out that they're as useful as they are.
=== Merged extensions ===
Merged into 1.23:
* ExpandTemplates (bug 28264).
* AssertEdit (bug 27841) - documented at API:Assert.
=== Interface ===
* (bug 42026) Add option to only show page creations in Special:Contributions (and API).
* Add new special page to list duplicate files, Special:ListDuplicatedFiles.
* (bug 60333) Add new special page listing tracking categories (Special:TrackingCategories).
=== Editing ===
* A new special page Special:Diff was added, allowing users to create internal links to revision comparison pages using syntax such as Special:Diff/12345, Special:Diff/12345/prev or Special:Diff/12345/98765.
=== Help pages ===
With 1.23, MediaWiki begins a process of consolidation of its help pages. Now, most are using the Translate extension and can be easily translated and updated in hundreds languages.
In the coming months, we'll focus on making more of the central help pages translatable and on linking them from the relevant MediaWiki interfaces for better discoverability. Please help: add your own translations; update existing pages and cover missing MediaWiki topics.
Traditionally, help pages have been scattered on countless wikis and poorly translated; most of those on mediawiki.org were migrated with the help of some Google Code-in students.
=== CSS refresh for Vector ===
* Various Vector CSS properties have been converted to LESS variables.
* The font size of <code>#bodyContent</code>/<code>.mw-body-content</code> has been increased to 0.875em.
* The line-height of <code>#bodyContent</code>/<code>.mw-body-content</code> has been increased to 1.6.
* The line-height of superscript (sup) and subscript (sub) are now set to 1.
* The default color for content text (but not the headers) is now #252525; (dark grey).
* All headers have updated sizes and margins.
* H1 and H2 headers now use a serif font.
* Body font is "sans-serif" as always.
For more information see Typography refresh.
=== Configuration ===
Add Config and GlobalConfig classes:
* Allows configuration options to be fetched from context.
* Only one implementation, GlobalConfig, is provided, which simply returns $GLOBALS[$name]. There can be more classes in the future, possibly a database-based one. For convinience the "wg" prefix is automatically added.
* This adds the $wgConfigClass global variable which is used to determine which implementation of Config to use by default.
* The ContextSource getConfig and setConfig methods were introduced.
Full release notes:
https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/1.23.0/RELEASE-NOTES-1.…https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.23
**********************************************************************
Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.23/mediawiki-1.23.0.tar.gz
GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.23/mediawiki-1.23.0.tar.gz.sig
Public keys:
https://www.mediawiki.org/keys/keys.html
Markus Glaser
(Release Team)