case 1) here on multiple wikis. Please dont follow the example of
Extension:Maps (which is nearly impossible to install without composer)
and continue to provide some easy method to install mediawiki for people
like me.
Am 12.06.2014 00:22, schrieb Markus Glaser:
Hi there,
this is a discussion happening on wikitech-l at the moment. I think this is
also of interest to all the mediawiki users out there ;) Please share your
thoughts!
Best,
Markus
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von Gabriel Wicke
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Juni 2014 20:48
An: Wikimedia developers
Betreff: [Wikitech-l] How to make MediaWiki easier to install: use cases
In the current discussion about git submodules vs. composer there are several
different underlying assumptions about the user's situation. I think it would
help the discussion to clarify which use cases we are dealing with.
Here is an attempt:
1) Shared hosting without shell. The user uploads code with (s)ftp, and can't
install anything globally.
2) Shared hosting with non-root shell and git installed. The user can use git
directly on the server, but can't install anything globally without root. They
can manually download composer to their home directory.
3) Root on a (virtual) server. The user can install packages, and do any of the
above.
The git submodules vs. composer discussion seems to focus on case 2). Case
1) could be addressed by providing a 'bundle' tar file with all dependencies
that can be uploaded via (s)ftp. In case 2) composer or git can be used on the
server to fetch dependencies separately.
When using git, it might be worth considering Parsoid's method of making the
core repository a submodule of a 'core-deploy' repository which has all
dependencies, rather than making the dependencies a submodule of core. This
avoids issues with git complaining about dirty submodules in the common case of
updating core often.
In case 3) the user has a full packaging system at their disposal, which means
that it is theoretically possible to set up a fully-featured MediaWiki system
with a few commands. So far we don't have any special support for this case (we
expect users to follow the manual tarball setup), which made sense in the past
as folks running their own server were fairly rare.
Many of our users are starting to take advantage of cheap virtual machines though, which
are now widely available at a price point comparable to shared hosting. For this reason I
think that we should put more effort into supporting case 3), for example by providing
good Debian packaging which lets you do "apt-get install mediawiki-full" and
get a MediaWiki install with caching, VisualEditor and so on. There are also other
benefits here beyond the initial install, like automatic security updates with
unattended-upgrades.
So far we don't have a good idea of how common the different use cases are, and
how this distribution is changing. I think that we should try to get this
information so that we can have a more informed debate.
Gabriel
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