So, I just wanted to say thanks to the MW team for doing the latest release. Wikitravel has been using an includes directory outside the Web directory since we started, and this should make things a little easier.
One thing I wanted to note is that it's not really necessary to have the LocalSettings.php file in the Web directory, either. Considering that it contains a lot of passwords, etc., any attack that could get that file's source would be pretty high-risk. Not that I know of one offhand, but still.
Anyways, Wikitravel's layout is like this:
/etc/mediawiki/ - *Settings.php, Language*.php /usr/local/share/mediawiki/ - All other *.php files /var/www/wikitravel/wiki/ - *.phtml /var/www/wikitravel/style/ - stylesheets
Adding /etc/mediawiki/ to the PHP4 include path makes this pretty straightforward. I have to do some patches to the *.phtml and some of the includes files so they know to include "LocalSettings.php" rather than "./LocalSettings.php" or "$IP/Language.php" or whatever.
I can submit this stuff as a patch, if anyone else thinks it'd be a better way to layout MediaWiki installations.
~ESP