[Foundation-l] MediaWiki 1.7.1 and Wikipedia

[Tim Starling]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 2.  Has Dependencies on PHP 5.0.0 (5.1.4).  php 5 is a bug infested 
> experimental release which does not have consistent installs on the 
> commerical
> Linux distributions, including Red Hat ES 4, Suse 10, etc, crashes on 
> apache, is poorly documented, and has a slew of defects, is difficult to 
> install and configure. 

PHP 4 is infested with bugs too, the difference is that the PHP devs refuse 
to backport fixes for them. PHP 5 has had 18 releases now, over the course 
of 3 years, and is widely available on commercial web hosts.

It's not the first time we've required PHP updates, we dropped support for 
PHP 4.1.x and then later 4.2.x.

> What should happen in the future:
> 
> 1.  MediaWiki needs to post releases against commercial Linux distros 
> and not a "roll your own" with a patchwork of patches and fixes.  As it 
> stands,
> MediaWiki 1.7.1 is not installable or usable on RedHat ES4 or FC5 
> without major patching and recompiling -- steps outside the skills of 
> most folks
> who need to use Wikipedia content. 
> 2.  Wikimedia needs to enforce MediaWiki releases to allow seamless 
> importing and use of XML dumps and content.

I wasn't aware that the linux distros weren't including PHP 5 yet. Here's 
Wikimedia's install script in case it helps:

http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/install-php

It should work on FC 3, 4 and maybe 5.

> My 2 cents.
> 
> I spend currently about 40% of my time getting around MediaWiki problems 
> with Wikipedia XML dumps, and 60% of my time actually working on Native 
> language translations.  The Uto-Aztecan language is being added at 
> present as the Ute and Unita tribes have joined the WikiGadugi project.  
> It would be nice if the MediaWiki folks would give more thought to 
> ensuring their software works properly before posting releases, and the 
> Wikimedia Foundation needs to enforce compatibilty between its published 
> XML dumps and make certain they work properly with released MediaWiki 
> versions.  As it stands, the current setup almost appears 
> anti-competitive by design to prevent folks from creating Wiki's of 
> Wikipedia content (though I do not believe this is intentional on the 
> part of Wikimedia).   
> 
> The "we are community driven" excuse only works if the community is also 
> the customer and end consumer of Wikipedia content, which it is not.  
> Anything we can do to make all of our jobs easier and more pleasant is 
> appreciated.

MediaWiki is primarily written for Wikimedia, development has always been 
driven by Wikimedia's needs. It's no coincidence that we dropped PHP 4 
support not long after we upgraded the Wikimedia cluster to PHP 5. MediaWiki 
is not "community driven" if you take the community to be the external 
sysadmin community. It is driven by the community of Wikimedia users.

I don't know what your problem with the XML dumps is, but I'm sure if there 
is a problem with the format then it can be fixed. If you tell us what it 
is, of course.

Nod to Brion and Domas, I seem to be repeating some of the points they have 
made.

-- Tim Starling