Yes. Except that creating and XML lib in the rewrite is a lot less work than creating tests and cleaning up trunk (and after that, you pretty much end up where the rewrite is now).

 

For the same reason you block features after releasing a version: because new features introduce bugs. However, we might want to distinguish between the framework and bots here - it should be OK to add features to bots, as the rewrite did not clean up those parts (and adapting these few features should not be a huge issue).

Yes. However, non-API functions (e.g. Special:Export or XML) should not go into the APISite class but in the, say, ClassicSite and XMLSite class.

Best,

Merlijn