Developer hub



This is a high-level overview of the MediaWiki development process, 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. For help installing or customizing MediaWiki, visit the Sysadmin hub. For help using MediaWiki, visit the User hub.

Overview
MediaWiki is developed in an open source style using the PHP programming language primarily for the LAMP platform. MediaWiki 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.
 * 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. 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.

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:
 * 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:Extensions – an overview of installing and 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.