Lua scripting

WMF engineering activity

Lua scripting

Support for Lua as a scripting language for MediaWiki end-users

Group:	Platform
Start:	2011-08
End:
Management:	Tim Starling
Team:

We're working to support Lua as a scripting language for MediaWiki end users, including Wikipedia editors. You can try out the prototype now at http://scribunto.wmflabs.org/ .

Status

• [edit status] • [add new]
  2012-05-10: Tim Starling started the implementation of a replacement for MediaWiki markup-based templates, using the Lua scripting language, embedded via the Scribunto extension. You can try it now at the Labs prototyping site. Patrick Reilly spoke about the Lua scripting work in a presentation on 3 May 2012 (scroll to about 22:00 or 27:00 to see it). The current roadmap aims for a deployment to mediawiki.org in a few months; full deployment to Wikimedia sites is scheduled for 2013. Tim will lead tutorial sessions at the Berlin Hackathon 2012.

Rationale

Templates and ParserFunctions were introduced to allow end users of MediaWiki to replicate content easily and build tools using basic logic, effectively turning wikitext into a limited programming language.

However, complex templates have caused performance issues and bottlenecks.

This project aims to make it possible for MediaWiki end-users to use a proper scripting language that will be more powerful and efficient than ad-hoc ParserFunctions-based logic.

See also Scripting, Extension:Scribunto.

Roadmap

• See relevant portions of Roadmap for latest details on this project.

Documents

• User requirements: notes
• Specifications:
• Software design document:
• Test plan:
• Documentation plan:
• User interface design docs:
• Schedule:
• Task management:
• Release management plan:
• Communications plan:
• Status updates
• Explanation of why Tim's preferred language is Lua
• /Meeting_2012-01-25
• Lua Beginning Tutorial