Hi all, I have been talking to many third-party yas part of my WMF internship in the last few weeks and one the main concerns they express is the lack of stability in the PHP classes MediaWiki exposes from version to version. The frequent changes in what I would call the PHP-API makes extentions developement and maintenance much more difficult with compatibility from version to version becoming a problem. Solving the problem would probably result in the development of more extensions, easier maintenance, less hacks to core and more users upgrading to the latest MediaWiki version. I am sure WMF developers are facing similar issues especially with projects like WikiData going on.
My question is: With the given technical heritage that MediaWiki carries, is it possible to have a (relatively) stable set of PHP classes defined, with a pledge not to change them in the next X releases or at least with some longer deprecation time? What would maintaining such a PHP-API entail? How difficult is it given the vast number of dependancies in MediaWiki code? Does it require restructuring a lot of the current core code? Do you think it should be a definite goal for WMF? Thank you. Mariya _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
