On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Petr Kadlec petr.kadlec@gmail.com wrote:
You mean like… checking the “Include templates” box on Special:Export?
I guess that's what I mean, it's been a few years since I last saw Special:Export - long enough that I have no idea whether that box is from before or after that time.
But the problem is more difficult than that. MediaWiki has no chance of knowing which templates are “necessary for it to work properly”, it can only detect those that are _actually used_ in a specific use case (as you say, those which are shown on the edit page), which is just a subset of those required in general.
No, but it does at least mean that exporting and importing any single template should be possible in a very short time indeed.