On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 11:46 AM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
Another possibility is to shell out to nodejs-based services as an alternative to running them as ongoing web services.
I have a hard time imagining a situation where you can install node and everything else, but would not just apt-get install parsoid https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Setup or mathoid. VMs that can run MediaWiki with all bells & whistles start at around $3 per month http://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-classic.xml these days, and are likely to become even cheaper.
I believe we can make installing a fully-featured MediaWiki service system as simple as copy&pasting 2-3 lines to a shell, or even executing a remote installer script that runs those lines for you. Additionally, we can offer VM images derived from the same install process through Bitnami or others.
To make this happen, we need to evaluate the options, make a decision and then follow through by making this our recommended and supported installation mechanism & providing a solid upgrade path for existing content.
I created https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87774 as a high-level tracking bug for the task of evaluating and deciding on a distribution strategy targeted at VMs.
Gabriel