[Pkg-mediawiki-devel] Bug#703852: [mediawiki] mw{en, dis}ext ineffective for new installs

[Filipus Klutiero]

Package: mediawiki
Version: 1:1.19.4-1
Severity: serious
X-Debbugs-Cc: jmw at debian.org

This issue comes from a change in the mediawiki package, but affects 
mediawiki-extensions.

The scripts mwenext and mwdisext are supposed to respectively enable and 
disable a MediaWiki extension. But this doesn't work anymore on new 
installs following 
http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-mediawiki?view=revision&revision=261
Although most of debian_specific_config.patch may have been merged the 
upstream, the last part hasn't. It is needed to load 
/etc/mediawiki-extensions/extensions.php, which is the basis of the 
extensions mechanism.

This can be worked around by adding

> # debian specific include:
> if (is_file(\"/etc/mediawiki-extensions/extensions.php\")) {
> include( \"/etc/mediawiki-extensions/extensions.php\" );
> }

to the end of LocalSettings.php.

Note that this doesn't prevent admins from enabling extensions during 
the initial configuration (mw-config). This feature writes directly in 
LocalSettings.php (which can however cause conflict with the Debian 
mediawiki-extensions system).

I recommend that the snippet above be restored, but in system files 
rather than in LocalSettings.php. The snippet is necessary for the 
Debian mediawiki-extensions system to work, so it is not local 
configuration.

By the way, the extensions list needs an update at least for Interwiki.