Hi,
As you may know from previous postings to this list and the Wikimedia Blog, I've been working on a document presenting MediaWiki's architecture. The document will be integrated as a chapter in the second volume of the "Architecture of open-source applications" book.
The reason the Wikimedia Foundation agreed to do this, besides the book, was because we thought that such a document would also prove useful for new developers who want to familiarize themselves with how MediaWiki works. See [1] for more context.
I just finished most of the write-up, based on the input provided by developers, on the documentation on mw.o, on the doxygen doc, and on deep dives into the code.
We'll submit the final draft to the book's editors in about a week, but before that I'd like to ask you guys to review the document. Mostly for accuracy (we don't want to publish something that contains factual errors), but other comments are encouraged as well.
Please try to centralize the feedback on the document's talk page to avoid duplication between the mailing list and the talk page.
You don't have to review everything; if you want to focus on a specific section, that's fine, and I'll be grateful for any help that you provide.
Also, if you find the document useful, please say so on the talk page; it's really difficult to assess the impact of this kind of work, so any feedback will help us determine if we should attempt similar endeavors in the future.
The document is at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document/text ; be bold and feel free to edit the page directly, unless the changes are likely to be very disruptive.
Many thanks in advance for your help; I'm available to answer any question on- or offlist.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document
I encourage anybody who's spent any time developing for MediaWiki to go and read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document/text -- it's thorough! There are some FIXMEs in there where Guillaume requests more details about performance, caching, and skins, so if you can add some more info on the talk page this week, that would be great.
And it would be wonderful if someone with some Inkscape ability could put together a diagram or two that would help readers understand the architecture of MediaWiki. (Trevor?) Guillaume mentioned to me that he's looked at all the existing diagrams and none are quite right.
Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org wrote:
I encourage anybody who's spent any time developing for MediaWiki to go and read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document/text -- it's thorough! There are some FIXMEs in there where Guillaume requests more details about performance, caching, and skins, so if you can add some more info on the talk page this week, that would be great.
This is a great document to read even if you have no intent to make any edits. It's great background material. Suggestions on what to cut and optimize would also be appreciated, since we have a length quota for purposes of the AOSA book.
Rob
Hi Guillaume,
I just started reading the chapter, and I am really enjoying it. Your intro reminded me of an article Mathias Schindler and I wrote a few years back, maybe you want to skim it, and even find something interesting in it.
http://journal.webscience.org/213/
Cheers, Denny
2011/10/24 Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org
Hi,
As you may know from previous postings to this list and the Wikimedia Blog, I've been working on a document presenting MediaWiki's architecture. The document will be integrated as a chapter in the second volume of the "Architecture of open-source applications" book.
The reason the Wikimedia Foundation agreed to do this, besides the book, was because we thought that such a document would also prove useful for new developers who want to familiarize themselves with how MediaWiki works. See [1] for more context.
I just finished most of the write-up, based on the input provided by developers, on the documentation on mw.o, on the doxygen doc, and on deep dives into the code.
We'll submit the final draft to the book's editors in about a week, but before that I'd like to ask you guys to review the document. Mostly for accuracy (we don't want to publish something that contains factual errors), but other comments are encouraged as well.
Please try to centralize the feedback on the document's talk page to avoid duplication between the mailing list and the talk page.
You don't have to review everything; if you want to focus on a specific section, that's fine, and I'll be grateful for any help that you provide.
Also, if you find the document useful, please say so on the talk page; it's really difficult to assess the impact of this kind of work, so any feedback will help us determine if we should attempt similar endeavors in the future.
The document is at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document/text ; be bold and feel free to edit the page directly, unless the changes are likely to be very disruptive.
Many thanks in advance for your help; I'm available to answer any question on- or offlist.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_architecture_document
-- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation http://donate.wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
We'll submit the final draft to the book's editors in about a week, but before that I'd like to ask you guys to review the document. Mostly for accuracy (we don't want to publish something that contains factual errors), but other comments are encouraged as well.
Guilliaume: Are you interested in style edits on this as well? And if so, is it still open?
Cheers, -- jra
Hi,
On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
We'll submit the final draft to the book's editors in about a week, but before that I'd like to ask you guys to review the document. Mostly for accuracy (we don't want to publish something that contains factual errors), but other comments are encouraged as well.
Guilliaume: Are you interested in style edits on this as well? And if so, is it still open?
Yes, please, by all means. I'll be doing a final round of edits on Monday, which is when we'll submit the final draft.
Thanks,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guillaume Paumier" gpaumier@wikimedia.org
On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
We'll submit the final draft to the book's editors in about a week, but before that I'd like to ask you guys to review the document. Mostly for accuracy (we don't want to publish something that contains factual errors), but other comments are encouraged as well.
Guilliaume: Are you interested in style edits on this as well? And if so, is it still open?
Yes, please, by all means. I'll be doing a final round of edits on Monday, which is when we'll submit the final draft.
Cool. I'll put some energy into it tomorrow. It's not bad as it stands, mind, though it doesn't in fact answer the question I posited in another thread, since it's more about the architecture of the *code* than that of the *site*... at least as deep as I've read so far.
Cheers, -- jra
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