The nice thing about extensions, in comparison to the way modifications work for software like phpBB, is that they're pretty easy to remove: You just take a line out of LocalSettings.php, and it's gone. Of course, if it's something that affects pages in a lasting manner, then it could be messy...which extension are you looking at?
If you're worried about compatibility, then I would recommend you look at the version the extension is marked as being compatible with. If it's several versions back, then look and see if the author is active on the site, and if not, see if you can email him or her. If you can't get in contact with the author, then see if there are any other versions of the extension available that are being actively maintained. If not, then you could think about asking an experienced extension writer if he or she would be willing to help you in the event that an upgrade breaks something. (It probably pays to get someone in advance as a contingency, and it's doubly important to make backups so that you can revert an upgrade if it messes things up.)
On 2/6/07, Fernando Correia fernandoacorreia@gmail.com wrote:
2007/2/6, Daniel Israel dmi1@hushmail.com:
I'm setting up a wiki, and there are several extensions from either meta or mediawiki.org that would be quite useful. My concern is that if I install an extension and it breaks in some future mediawiki upgrade, I'm going to be stuck either re-writing 100s of wiki pages, or debugging the extension.
In general, is there any policy for the mediawiki developers as far as testing that extensions continue to work? If not, can I have any reasonable confidence level? Experience, anyone?
Some extensions are no longer maintained.
I suppose you can either make do without extensions or use them and delay a future MediaWiki upgrade until you or someone can fix an extension that did break.
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