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?
-- Daniel M. Israel dmi1@cornell.edu
I don't think there are any hard-and-fast rules about forward compatibility. It's an open system, and extensions are "use at your own risk".
That said, the extensions on mediawiki.org in [[Category:Extensions]] should use the {{extension}} template. If they do, they probably have a version(s) field which lists compatibility.
Look for extensions that either: A) Have been around for a long time, B) Are supported in several wiki versions, or C) Have reputable looking homepages
Also, if it's something that a lot of people use, chances are that it'll be supported in the future (by the original author or otherwise). On the other hand, if it's highly specialized for a particular small niche, you might not be so lucky.
Hope this helps.
-- Jim R. Wilson
On 2/6/07, Daniel Israel dmi1@hushmail.com wrote:
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?
-- Daniel M. Israel dmi1@cornell.edu
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
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.
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.
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
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Moin,
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 23:47:01 Daniel Israel wrote:
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?
My extensions are maintained, in so far there is sufficient interest. Since they are all on CPAN:
You can download them from there, and also file bug reports on rt.cpan.org.
Best wishes,
Tels
- -- Signed on Wed Feb 7 18:51:32 2007 with key 0x93B84C15. Get one of my photo posters: http://bloodgate.com/posters PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
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