Download from Git

Git is distributed version control software that allows users to download the very latest version of a branch, without having to wait for someone to get around to packaging it. MediaWiki will release faster, and it'll be easier for you to update your installation, roll back an upgrade, or bugzilla>Gerrit/Tutorial|submit patches. (Of course always remember official stable releases are less risky.)

See 1>Special:MyLanguage/Gerrit|Git for more details, particularly for making contributions. Below are some quick directions for a couple common tasks.

Prerequisites
You must have Git installed before you can use it. There are many different ways to acquire Git, depending on your operating system. For source and official binaries, check out [https://git-scm.com/ git-scm.com]. For alternative ways to install Git, use your favorite search engine to find instructions for your operating system.

It is recommended that you have Composer installed to download and install third party libraries, but not required.

Download
You can download MediaWiki core using Git, as well as all extensions currently installed on the Wikimedia Foundation server cluster and many other extensions hosted on .

The first step is to clone the MediaWiki core repository. This will take a while.

In a terminal window, enter the following command:

This clones the entire MediaWiki core repository, initially pointed at release branch , into a sub-directory named  .

To install into different directory, change that in the command line (for more info [https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone refer to these docs]).

Once the repository is cloned, you can easily switch to different branches or tags (see below), including those tracking unstable versions of MediaWiki.

The development branch,  , is the cutting-edge, developer version of MediaWiki; you should not use master code for production under any circumstances as it is not considered stable.

If you want to reduce the number of revisions that are cloned, add <tvar|cmd> </> to the above command.

The release branches have a bunch of Git submodules in them, for commonly-used extensions and skins (the master branch does not have these). To update the submodules, run:

Download for development
If you have a dev>Special:MyLanguage/Developer account</>|developer account (which is easy to request), then instead of cloning anonymously with https you should clone with your ssh <USERNAME> so that you can submit changes for review:

This clones the entire MediaWiki core repository, synced to the master branch, into a sub-directory named <tvar|dir> </>.



Fetch external libraries
MediaWiki uses Composer to manage external PHP libraries, all of which end up in the  directory in your MediaWiki directory.

To install these needed libraries, you have a choice:


 * [<tvar|url-c>https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally</> Download and install the composer PHAR], optionally rename the composer.phar file as instructed for your OS, and then run <tvar|code> </> from your MediaWiki directory. This is the recommended approach.

Note that if any of your extensions have their own Composer requirements, then you cannot use this option.
 * Or, if you don't want to use Composer or if you want to use the exact same set of vendor libraries as used on the WMF production cluster, you can instead <tvar|git> </> to create a <tvar|vendor> </> directory inside the core folder of your MediaWiki installation.

Prior to MediaWiki 1.25, external libraries were kept in the core repository, and no package manager was required.

MediaWiki tags (stable version)
Alternatively, specific stable versions of MediaWiki are tracked using 'tags'. These are analogous to the tarball releases.

Currently, these are <tvar|1></> (stable), <tvar|2></> (LTS) and <tvar|3></> (legacy).

You can see all available tags with:

Using non GNU sort command, such as on Mac OS X, you have to rely on the good old separators:

To use a specific tag, e.g. the latest stable release:

Latest development version of MediaWiki
The latest development version of MediaWiki is tracked in the 'master' branch. This is what is locally checked out by default when you first clone the MediaWiki repository. If you have switched to another branch but would like to switch back to using bleeding-edge MediaWiki, do:

Keeping up to date
If you're using a particular branch or the development version ("master" branch) of MediaWiki, picking up the latest changes is relatively easy. Change into your MediaWiki clone directory and issue this command:

All of the latest changes for the branch you are using will be applied.

The new version of core may require newer versions of extensions and skins, so you must go into each extension and skin directory and update it with a command like <tvar|command> </>.

You also need to update  with any newer versions of required libraries. This often means running the following Composer command, but see 1>#Fetch external libraries</>|#Fetch external libraries above for more details:

After updating/upgrading the code and required libraries you should run the MediaWiki <tvar|update> </> command-line script to update database tables as needed:

If you use MediaWiki-Vagrant, it offers a single command, <tvar|command> </>, that performs all these steps.

Switching to a different version
Each of our versions are tracked as branches or tags. In order to switch to a different version, all you have to do is [<tvar|url>https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Basic-Branching-and-Merging</> checkout] the particular branch or tag you want from within your MediaWiki clone directory:

or

The changes will be applied automatically and you will be all set to go.

Using Git to download MediaWiki extensions

 * [<tvar|url>https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/admin/projects/?filter=mediawiki%252Fextensions%252F</> List of extensions in git]

Download an extension

 * <EXT> should be replaced with the name of the extension you want to download, without spaces. For <tvar|1></>, it would be TitleKey. (case sensitive!)

Download and clone an extension from Git:

developers>Special:MyLanguage/Developer account</>|Developers clone with:

You can view extension source code in [<tvar|url>https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/</> Gerrit's gitiles] application, and at the URL:

<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/<EXT>/+/refs/heads/master

Download all extensions
If you prefer to have all MediaWiki extensions that are at <tvar|gerrit>gerrit.wikimedia.org</> checked out to your machine, enter the following:

Thereafter, to update all extensions to their latest versions of that branch, just enter:

To change to a different branch, such as after a new release:

Remember that you should only use versions of extensions from the same release as that version of MediaWiki and each other.

To track the master branch:

Please note that you should not use master code for production under any circumstances as it is not considered stable.

If you only need a read-only checkout (for instance to grep or analyse all MediaWiki code), you can use the 1>wikitech:Help:Shared_storage#/shared/mediawiki/</>|shared MediaWiki checkout on Labs, without downloading anything on your machines.

Remove an extension

 * 1) Remove the "<tvar|code> </>" or "<tvar|code2> </>" from <tvar|LocalSettings> </>


 * 1) Remove any line referencing the extension in <tvar|1> </> (usually in the "extra → merge-plugin → include" section)


 * 1) Remove the extension's directory in <tvar|1> </>

Using Git to download MediaWiki skins

 * [<tvar|url>https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/admin/projects/?filter=mediawiki%252Fskins%252F</> List of skins in git]

MediaWiki 1.24 and later don't include skins in the Git download.

Follow the exact same procedure as for extensions (described in the previous section), but using  rather than   in all URLs and paths.

Detailed installation instructions are available on each skin's page here on MediaWiki.org, for example see vector>Special:MyLanguage/Skin:Vector#Installation</>|Skin:Vector#Installation. Instructions for all other skins are analogous.