Version lifecycle

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 quarterly 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.

Developers of MediaWiki, including the release manager, Tim Starling, strongly recommend that wiki operators subscribe to the mediawiki-announce 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 mediawiki-l and wikitech-l.

Current versions and their end-of-life periods
Versions not included in this table are to be considered obsolete and will not receive security fixes.

The release manager has issued a strong recommendation that versions not listed above are not used. They can contain critical security vulnerabilities and other major bugs, including possible data loss and/or corruption.