On 2009-07-30, Brian wrote:
The versioning interactions between mediawiki and its extensions are so complicated that it is simply not feasible to run the latest release while simultaneously using a variety of extensions.
Please can you explain more; last time I tried, branched versions of extension generally worked with branched versions of MediaWiki? If this isn't the case then it should be fixed.
Additionally, I strongly disagree with your definition of the code being used on Wikipedia as beyond stable.
Code in trunk is under development, that is what defines trunk - it hasn't been tested to the same level as releases. Although I think this is case where everyone will have different opinions, I'm not sure of the current official stance.