[Pkg-mediawiki-devel] Packaging mediawiki extentions

[Marc Dequènes (Duck)]

Coin,

"Sandro Tosi" <matrixhasu at gmail.com> writes:

> I've stated using mediawiki at work and we applied some extentions.
> I'd like to package them so that debian installation for extantions is
> as easy as apt-get them.

That's a good idea. We planned to work on this but core packages,
transitions, and non-mediawiki work caught all our time. So if you're
ready to help, even if not DD, we would be glad to receive your
contribution :-).

>> extentions are php files, there are some problems with them? For sure
>> they have to be released as GPL (or other licences that allow us to
>> include them in debian); other that, do you see something else?

Yes, the licence and copyright must be 1) clearly stated, 2) compatible
with Debian DFSG, and 3) compatible with mediwiki's licence too.

>> An important thing to note it is that
>> /etc/mediawiki*/LocalSettings.php must exists because an extentions
>> could be installed: where is the best place to check that file
>> existance? preinst?

You cannot assume this file is created, because a user may install both
mediawiki and extensions at the same time and it is created later when
the user uses the web interface.

So, the right thing to do seems to add a code snipet into the generated
LocalSettings.php to include a extension-specific configuration file
(shipped or generated by the extensions) if it exists.

>> if an extention could run on mw 1.4 and 1.5 it has to be packaged
>> twice, since paths are different: could we solve somehow? or don't
>> bother since mw1.4 is obsolete? could it be same issue with
>> mw1.6,using different directories?

Until mediawiki authors are capable to reproduce seamless upgrades like
gallery2 is able to, we would probably have to keep the versioning
scheme in paths.

But i guess this could be solved using symlinks, but it's not yet clear
in my mind how this should be done.

> A great problem is:
>
> # no .tar.gz upstream package. Usually they are php (or other format,
> i.e. pdf...) downloadable from internet. We could create a
> debian-specific package, but it makes little sense to me... (and there
> is even some problem with package version)

This is not really a problem. Packaging 1-3 files per package is not
that interresting for users. I suggest we select well working and most
used extensions and group them in a debian native package
mediawiki-extensions, and less used ones in
mediawiki-extensions-extra. Extensions too big or having embarrasing
dependencies could stil be packaged separately.

> In next days, I'll try to create a package for some easy exts, just for test.

OK, we are mostly working on transitions (when some free time is
available), but we could review it and include it in the official list
of packages of the team when mature enough (and you could perhaps enter
the team if you are willing to help on the long term ;-).

-- 
Marc Dequènes (Duck)
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