Version lifecycle/en

MediaWiki operates on a "continuous integration" development model, where software changes are pushed live to Wikimedia web sites such as Wikipedia on a regular basis.

In theory, new major releases are issued on a half-year basis, and release branches continue to receive security updates for up to a year as of first release. Due to time constraints and rapid refactoring of the code base, we cannot support obsolete releases forever, and security and critical updates are not applied to releases which have reached their end of life status.

The release manager strongly recommends that wiki operators subscribe to the  mailing list, which receives notification of all releases, and ensure that their wiki runs the most up to date version of the software possible. These announcements are also posted to  and.

Versions and their end-of-life
Versions included in the above table that are marked as obsolete as well as versions not listed at all will not receive any security fixes. They may contain critical security vulnerabilities and other major bugs, including the threat of possible data loss and/or corruption. The release manager has also issued a strong recommendation that only versions listed above as the current “stable version”, "legacy version" or “long-term support version” be used in a production environment.

Release policy

 * Every point release will include updated i18n files as well as any bug fixes. No new features will be back-ported to point releases and support does not necessarily include in general.
 * A major release will be made every six months.
 * A minor release (including security patches, message translation back-ports, and general bugfixes) will be made every quarter.
 * A long-term support release (LTS) will be made every two years. There will be a one-year overlap in LTS support. For example, 1.23 was supported until May 2017. 1.27 was released the year before, so that people have it available as an LTS to move to and a year to make the transition.
 * Release notes will continue to be the basis for seeing what has changed. Because of the nature of a volunteer-driven project, it isn't possible to say with any certainty what will happen in the next 6-12 months.

Release schedule
This timeline is a schedule for what needs to happen before the release of a new version. The date of the actual release is given here as T (for "time" of release) and the suffix -# (for “number of weeks prior to release”).

Extension lifecycle management
Most MediaWiki installations include a significant number of extensions (Wikimedia wikis often have around 140). Managing the maintenance bug fixing of extensions and choosing the right version of an extension in cases where the HEAD development version relies on features not yet available in stable or oldstable MediaWiki core, can be challenging.

Extension maintainers are therefore strongly encouraged to maintain a git branches for each extension version corresponding to a MediaWiki version. (See for details.) For extensions hosted in Wikimedia's git repos, such branches (with names such as  for MediaWiki 1.30) are created automatically from master when a new MediaWiki version is branched (on the assumption that the extension master is compatible with MediaWiki master at all times). However, it's preferable for the extension maintainer to fix bugs not only in HEAD but also in the oldstable and stable versions (by backporting the fix to the old branches if necessary).

The goal of these rules is that people or organizations installing MediaWiki can rely on installing the newest release of a version and matching extensions by a simple method, e.g. for 1.20.x core by referring to  in git. And it avoids tarballs and zip files with non-relevant and unpredictable names.

Since Version 1.36, MediaWiki only commits to supporting upgrades from two major long-term support releases (LTS) ago (see T259771). Upgrades from older versions of MediaWiki will have to be performed in multiple steps.