[Pkg-mediawiki-devel] Multisite install - what about DB updates?

[Michael Gissing]

On 05/22/2013 12:05 PM, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> Cc’ing you since you’re obviously not subscribed to the list;
> note that the list normally sets a followup-to-list.

thx, now I'm on ;)

> On Wed, 22 May 2013, Michael Gissing wrote:
>
>> I'm planning to host multiple wikis with the same code base. The code should
>> be maintained by apt. Now to my question:
>>
>> Is it possible that a newer package version will need a database update or
>> will the database stay stable in one debian release?
>
> Newer versions will always require running the upgrade script.
> Even installing mediawiki-extensions-* require running the
> upgrade script on all databases.

OK, but I can't find how the .deb handles this. Packages like 
mediawiki-extensions-openid don't have any scripts at all. How does apt 
perform the update after installing a new version/extension?

>> Or in other words: do I need to care about updating all my databases after apt
>> has updated the codebase?
>
> The fusionforge-plugin-mediawiki package, which is exactly
> what you’re planning to do (a wiki farm), handles them
> using a trigger (interest on the mediawiki codepath).

Thanks for the hint. The trigger thing looks promising.

But I don't understand how it works when extensions are installed. It 
just triggers changes in /usr/share/mediawiki/maintenance/postgres

> It runs the upgrade scripts way too often (on every upgrade
> of mediawiki, an extension or the plugin itself), but that’s
> better than not often enough.

I'd be happy with such a behavior. :)

Now I'm planing to write my own package. But I don't yet fully 
understand what the Debian way of updating the databases should look like...

> bye,
> //mirabilos

Michael