If this is merged after the 1.16 branching, and support for old skins would be dropped from 1.17 on, you'll be able to use the old skinning system up to EOL of 1.16 as a supported version, expected somewhere around March 2011 or a few months later. Should give you ample time to prepare for MediaWiki 1.18 or whatever is the current version then...
Siebrand
-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Conrad Irwin Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:52 PM To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Skin system rewrite
This is great, just one question though - will "old-style" skins still be supported (for a few versions at least)? I have a dozen or so skins that currently work, it would be an absolute nightmare if I have to upgrade them all when MediaWiki swaps over to this. Perhaps a compatibility layer could be put over the top of the new system to resemble the old.