Hei folks,
looking at https://wiki.debian.org/MediaWiki the mediawiki-package for Debian seems to be in not-so-good shape.
Debian is shipping 1.19 - Upstream Security support has ended, Debian security seems to end soon.
We're running mediawiki on Debian for a small community project and I'm thinking about our deploment.
We've been using mediawiki's tarballs for a few months now, but looking at the patch-version our installation is outdated quite often. Thinking about reason, I came up with this:
- Updating the tarball is unpleasant and cumbersome comparing to apt-get upgrade - The tooling for whining on an outdated installation is rather non-existent. It's easy to overlook the issue. - Updating an installation requires knowledge on how to deploy mediawiki and its internals. It cannot be done by somebody familiar with Debian, only.
Using a debian package is very helpful - patching / upgrading is very easy. Since apt is integrated into icinga, these issue do not get overlooked that easy.
What do you thing about the situation?
Thinking about release intervals, Debian is way slower compared to mediawiki - thus Debian's packages for mediawiki become outdated with very high probability. Is there a chance to see debian packages built by mediawiki some day soon?
Greetz, yanosz
Yeah ... for a while the Debian package for MediaWiki was distinctly idiosyncratic (even by Debian standards), enough so that people were recommended not to use it at all and just use the tarball.
For 1.19 it was less variant from upstream and well-maintained enough to steer people to, but then the maintainer quit.
My advice for now would be to run MW from the mediawiki.org tarball. (This is what I do with various intranet systems running on Ubuntu.) Updating them by hand using the official patch files is slightly annoying, but not onerous.
As for the Ubuntu/Debian package ... it'd be *nice* if there were something somewhat official that does things the slightly weird Debian way. But the first thing that would require is someone committing to do the job.
On 22 March 2016 at 10:52, Jan Lühr mediawiki@yanosz.net wrote:
Hei folks,
looking at https://wiki.debian.org/MediaWiki the mediawiki-package for Debian seems to be in not-so-good shape.
Debian is shipping 1.19 - Upstream Security support has ended, Debian security seems to end soon.
We're running mediawiki on Debian for a small community project and I'm thinking about our deploment.
We've been using mediawiki's tarballs for a few months now, but looking at the patch-version our installation is outdated quite often. Thinking about reason, I came up with this:
- Updating the tarball is unpleasant and cumbersome comparing to apt-get
upgrade
- The tooling for whining on an outdated installation is rather
non-existent. It's easy to overlook the issue.
- Updating an installation requires knowledge on how to deploy mediawiki
and its internals. It cannot be done by somebody familiar with Debian, only.
Using a debian package is very helpful - patching / upgrading is very easy. Since apt is integrated into icinga, these issue do not get overlooked that easy.
What do you thing about the situation?
Thinking about release intervals, Debian is way slower compared to mediawiki - thus Debian's packages for mediawiki become outdated with very high probability. Is there a chance to see debian packages built by mediawiki some day soon?
Greetz, yanosz
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Hi,
On 03/22/2016 03:52 AM, Jan Lühr wrote:
Thinking about release intervals, Debian is way slower compared to mediawiki - thus Debian's packages for mediawiki become outdated with very high probability. Is there a chance to see debian packages built by mediawiki some day soon?
The MediaWiki LTS cycle actually lines up pretty closely with the Debian release cycle.
I'm currently working on getting an updated version of MediaWiki into Debian, see the ITP[1] and my email to the mediawiki-distributors mailing list[2]. The package still needs to be reviewed by the Debian FTP masters and might take a while. In the meantime, you can try out the debs from [3] if you'd like to help test :)
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=810290 [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-distributors/2016-January/00... [3] https://people.wikimedia.org/~legoktm/debian/
-- Legoktm
Hello,
Am 03/22/2016 um 06:50 PM schrieb Legoktm:
Hi,
On 03/22/2016 03:52 AM, Jan Lühr wrote:
Thinking about release intervals, Debian is way slower compared to mediawiki - thus Debian's packages for mediawiki become outdated with very high probability. Is there a chance to see debian packages built by mediawiki some day soon?
The MediaWiki LTS cycle actually lines up pretty closely with the Debian release cycle.
Ok .. well, I'm not that into mediawiki.
I'm currently working on getting an updated version of MediaWiki into Debian,
That's great! Thanks a lot!
see the ITP[1] and my email to the mediawiki-distributors mailing list[2]. The package still needs to be reviewed by the Debian FTP masters and might take a while. In the meantime, you can try out the debs from [3] if you'd like to help test :)
Hm... what are your plans for testing? Do you need some help?
Focusing on security (including availability / stability) using your package in our deployment is not an option, yet. :-(. But, the moment it is in reach, I'd very happy to go for it :-).
However, are there some testcases I can run in the meantime? Is there a testplan?
Thanks, yanosz
Hello,
replying to myself, I forgot to mention:
Am 03/23/2016 um 12:41 AM schrieb Jan Lühr:
Hello,
Am 03/22/2016 um 06:50 PM schrieb Legoktm:
Hi,
On 03/22/2016 03:52 AM, Jan Lühr wrote:
Thinking about release intervals, Debian is way slower compared to mediawiki - thus Debian's packages for mediawiki become outdated with very high probability. Is there a chance to see debian packages built by mediawiki some day soon?
The MediaWiki LTS cycle actually lines up pretty closely with the Debian release cycle.
Ok .. well, I'm not that into mediawiki.
I'm currently working on getting an updated version of MediaWiki into Debian,
That's great! Thanks a lot!
Another option is to integrated Debian packing into mediawiki's CI (aka jenkins).
If the mediawiki's release process is "good", there's hardly any maintenance work todo: Updating dependency definitions and distro names according to debian is the only thing I've in my mind atm.
However, this requires mediawiki's release process to include tested upgrade routines: For instance: If a database-update is needed, having a readme-file mentioning some manual steps is not enough. This somewhat implies that there are integration-tests for upgrade-scripts that are a) integrated into the release process and b) can be used by the debian packaging jobs If this is up'n'running, packing for ubuntu is easy to add.
I don't know if mediawiki is there. I cannot say anything about the shape of the release-process or likelihood of this setup.
Greet, yanosz
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org