Developer hub



This is a high-level overview of MediaWiki development, including links to the key documents, resources and tools available to MediaWiki developers. It is written for skilled LAMP developers who have experience using MediaWiki.

For an introductory guide to developing MediaWiki, read how to become a MediaWiki hacker. If you want to understand how to use a part of MediaWiki (e.g. the Job Queue) see the developer's FAQ

For help installing or customizing MediaWiki, visit the Sysadmin hub. For help using MediaWiki, visit the User hub. If you do not understand php, but want to help with other projects which are being used on wikimedia projects, see Developer hub on meta.

Overview
MediaWiki is developed in an open source style using the PHP programming language primarily for the LAMP platform. Core development is largely coordinated online:
 * development discussion happens on various mailing lists and IRC channels. The main developer list is wikitech-l. The main developer IRC channel is #mediawiki. Read the Developers article to get a sense for who the people on the mailing lists and IRC channels are.
 * The MediaWiki roadmap shows rough information about when major development work is scheduled.
 * bugs are managed using Bugzilla at bugzilla.wikimedia.org. The Bugs article has an overview of how the MediaWiki developers manage bugs.
 * security issues are reported to [mailto:security@wikimedia.org security@wikimedia.org]. Read article Security for more information.
 * code review is facilitated using the CodeReview MediaWiki extension at Special:Code/MediaWiki and Bugzilla's patch attachment system, and follows the code review guidelines.
 * source code is managed using the Subversion revision control system. Read the Subversion article for an overview of how the MediaWiki developers use Subversion. Read the Commit access article if you'd like commit access.


 * documentation for developers is maintained in the Manual namespace on this wiki. A file and class reference (which is generated from the MediaWiki source code using doxygen) can be found at http://svn.wikimedia.org/doc.
 * developers extending or interfacing with MediaWiki (instead working on the core code) have several convenient extension points, including the API, the Hooks system and Skins – see the section of this page for an overview.

Extending MediaWiki
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. There are five main extension points that allow developers to change or extend what MediaWiki can do. The extension points are:
 * API – access the data and metadata of MediaWiki instances through a powerful web API.
 * Hooks – every time a given event happens do something.
 * Parser Functions – create a new command like:
 * Skins – change the look and feel of MediaWiki.
 * Special Pages – add a new special page.
 * Tag Extensions – create a new tag like:

Help for extension developers

 * Manual:Developing extensions – a guide to developing extensions.
 * Extensions FAQ
 * Extension Matrix – an auto-generated list of extensions. See also Category:Extensions, a less complete list of extensions.
 * Manual:$wgExtensionFunctions – use to defer setup (or run other callbacks) for extensions until after the MediaWiki core is setup.

Help for skin developers

 * Manual:Skinning – instructions on how to create a skin for MediaWiki.
 * Manual:Skin configuration – a guide to configuring skins for a wiki.