Developer hub



This is a high-level overview of the MediaWiki development process, along with the major resources and tools available to MediaWiki developers. It is written for experienced LAMP developers and MediaWiki developers. For a more introductory guide to developing MediaWiki, read the how to become a MediaWiki hacker article.

For help installing or customizing MediaWiki, visit the Sysadmin hub. For help using MediaWiki, visit the User hub.

Overview
MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language, with some supporting tools written in other languages. The software runs on various platforms, but is primarily developed for the LAMP platform. Various other tools (such as APC, memcached and LaTeX) are used to enhance the functionality or performance of MediaWiki.

The MediaWiki developers coordinate most of their work using online (or networked) tools and documents:
 * development discussion happens on various mailing lists and IRC channels. The main developer list is wikitech-l. The main developer IRC channel is #mediawiki.
 * The MediaWiki roadmap shows rough information about when major development work is scheduled.
 * bugs and issues are managed using Bugzilla at bugzilla.wikimedia.org.
 * code review is facilitated using the CodeReview MediaWiki extension at Special:Code/MediaWiki and follows the code review guidelines.
 * source code is managed using the Subversion revision control system.


 * documentation for developers is maintained in the Manual namespace on this wiki. A class reference (which is generated from the MediaWiki source code using doxygen) can be found at http://svn.wikimedia.org/doc.

Info on MediaWiki.org

 * Commit access – How to commit to the MediaWiki code repository, and what you need to do to be granted permission to do so.
 * Localisation – Technical description of MediaWiki's I18N / internationalization system.
 * meta:Category:MediaWiki Development
 * API – external API for the direct data-layer access.

Extending MediaWiki
There are 5 main extension points that allow developers to add features and functionalities to MediaWiki or to change existing functionalities. MediaWiki has been designed to allow for modification without changing the "core code". This makes it easy to update to a new version of MediaWiki without having to manually merge in old extension code changes. The extension points are:


 * Hooks – Every time "X" happens do something...
 * Tag Extensions – Create a new tag like:
 * Parser Functions – Create a new command like:
 * Special Pages – Add a new special page.
 * Skins – Change the look and feel of MediaWiki.

Help for extension writers

 * Extensions:
 * Manual:Extensions
 * Extensions FAQ
 * Category:Extensions – A (very incomplete) list of existing extensions
 * Extension Matrix – A better auto-generated list.
 * Manual:$wgExtensionFunctions
 * Code:
 * Manual:Code
 * Manual:Coding conventions
 * Skins:
 * Manual:Skinning
 * Manual:Skin configuration
 * Database:
 * Manual:Database layout
 * Manual:Database access
 * Manual:Magic words
 * How to become a MediaWiki hacker
 * Category:MediaWiki Development