The update guide for extensions is pretty much download a new version and replace it. Pretty much the same as MediaWiki itself. Then run updater.php/the installer.
1.17 to 1.18 will have been potentially a more difficult than 1.18 to 1.19 would be, but of course, that's not actually a proper release, so it's not recommended to use it in a production environment.
Granted, ExtensionDistributor hasn't been switched over to using git on mw.org. It will be fine for git HEAD checkouts, but currently for other releases it's not going to work so well.
I most certainly would NOT recommend editing the extensions yourself to "upgrade" them (unless they are your own, not under version control). If you upgrade to a newer version and then there is issues, you might want to try looking into it yourself, or just report a bug on our bugzilla [1] instance.
For your own extensions I don't think there should be m?any changes to be made. Knowing (and being told) what is broken is probably easier to notify us, rather than us guessing what may be broken.
Sam
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org
-----Original Message----- From: Sumana Harihareswara [mailto:sumanah@wikimedia.org] Sent: 18 April 2012 03:14 To: Wikimedia developers; sancelot@free.fr; Sam Reed; Gregory Varnum Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] migration guide
On 03/01/2012 06:17 AM, Stéphane ANCELOT wrote:
Hi !
I thank you all everybody for your nice job, mediawiki is a great
platform.
However, as you may know, we are some people to develop , contribute to some extensions, and every time I migrate my wiki setup to a new version, that looks like a nightmare !!! (mostly for the last 1.18.1).
I have either to upgrade extensions or dive into php code to make it running with the new mediawiki release.
But this time, with 1.18.1 I am worried, because I do not have an in deep knowledge of the mediawiki process.
So, the next time, a release is delivered, please provide with it a migration guide for extensions !!!!! This will permit every developer to maintain in a fast and efficient way, most extensions !! And since we are all very good developers, I am pretty sure some people will be able to provide a helpful migrating utility (when only function name changes apply) ....
Today, I am not able to participate or migrate the CKeditor to the 1.18.1 Release .
Regards . S.Ancelot
Reviving this since there's just one blocker (bug 34885) before the 1.19 release.
Stéphane would like a guide that tells developers how to update their MediaWiki extensions to make them compatible with MediaWiki 1.19. This seems like a reasonable request. Can anyone take the lead on this? The release notes + https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.19 would be a good starting point, and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Migration_guide_for_extension_ developers would be a model to copy.
-- Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation