[Wikipedia-news] Code base questions, again

[Robert Treat]

On Friday 10 February 2006 14:55, Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote:
> I continue to be interested in resolving the questions related to this
> code base.
>
> In the MediaWiki code base there does appear to be at least a partial
> integration of the PostgreSQL support. And there is a note in the
> release-notes that says that PostgreSQL support is partially complete -
> requiring integration of search and install.
>

The initial port for postgresql was completed in mediawiki 1.4. AFAIK this 
actually worked.  During the development of Mediawiki 1.5 the postgresql 
support was allowed to break, and the code began to rot from there on.  
Mediawiki released 1.5 without postgresql support saying it would be fixed at 
a later date [1]. This is about the time myself and Dennis Lubert came into 
the picture (from a code stand point).  Independently we were both working on 
fixing the postgresql support in 1.5 code, and happened to run across each 
other on irc. We collaborated on a getting a working copy going (Dennis being 
the far more important piece of that equation) and proceeded with an attempt 
to push those changes back into the mediawiki proper.  I mailed the mediawiki 
developers list asking about getting access to submit changes based on thier 
procedures and was kindly rejected and instructed to submit a patch. [2] At 
this point in time, Dennis went ahead and submitted a patch to mediawiki with 
the changes we had made. From what Dennis has told me on irc, he spoke with 
the mediawiki developers who basically said that they were thankful for the 
patch but didn't have the resources to actually test and commit the patch. 
(This is putting it nicely).  As a result the the bug was closed as wontfix 
[3], and afaik mediawiki no longer plans to support postgresql going forward. 
Note that some of these conversations took place on irc, so we may not have 
direct links, but that is the impression that both Dennis and I were left 
with. 

[1]http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=361506&group_id=34373
[2]http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/031958.html
[3]http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3788

> While the Wikipgedia code base appears to be odd - For example, it is
> not clear that it is, in fact the version MediaWiki version 1.6 alpha it
> claims to be.  Which brings me back to the question of maintenance.

It has some of the 1.6 code, but the mediawiki code has been drifting faster 
than we could keep up with it. 

>
> It does not look like a lot of work to integrate PostgreSQL support with
> MediaWiki, and it just makes more sense to me that we help maintain the
> MediaWiki patch/support rather than work to keep in sync with MediaWiki
> which is still undergoing major changes.  I might be willing to put a
> day or two into fixing it - but I am not able to maintain such an
> integration.
>

it's not that we don't want to work with mediawiki, it's that they really 
aren't interested in supporting postgresql. Even if we could get them to 
start accepting patches again, I would be skeptical that postgresql would 
ever be more than a second class citizen; they use mysql, perfer mysql, and 
even have a paid mysql developer to keep things humming.  it's a shame, 
because I really think it is holding them back. 

> Mention was made here earlier of a patch submitted to MediaWiki - can I
> get a copy of that patch?
>

See the bug report above, I believe it's in there, though I suspect it will no 
longer cleanly apply.  

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL