On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 10:49 AM, Siebrand Mazeland (WMF) < smazeland@wikimedia.org> wrote:
- How can I get access to this environment, so I can fiddle with it,
too (or is this done through "test puppet changes" or something? 2. Is it possible to simply clone another one of these environments, and if so, how is that done?
beta.wmflabs is a complex multi-machine setup. Read https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployment/Overview (poorly named, it's just for the beta).
However, it would be extremely useful to have a way to make a developer's local MediaWiki or small instance "much like" production. In my case I keep adding more extensions and settings to my local install every time I find something that affects behavior, and I'm still bitten by changes like turning on $wgHtml5. I couldn't figure out how to "import" the production InitialiseSettings.php and CommonSettings.php to a simple single instance.
People seem interested in this, meanwhile it seems everyone's figuring it out for themselves. As a start, I added more to https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:InstanceConfigMediawiki and on its talk page mentioned how E3 sets up its MW instances. Please share what you're doing there.
In the promised land, developers use vagrant to run local VM instances on laptops that puppet configures to run a production-ish MediaWiki. At Etsy and Facebook, the day a developer walks in she can make changes in her personal VM and push them to production (or so they claim in blog posts and meetups ;-) ).