How to become a MediaWiki hacker/zh

This article is written to help developers learn the basic skills needed to contribute to MediaWiki development.

If you are an experienced developer who is familiar with using MediaWiki already, visit the  instead.

概覽
MediaWiki是维基百科，與其分项目，还有世界各地数以千计的维基网站使用的软件. 它可用於大多數的作業系統，以PHP編譯，主要使用MySQL資料庫伺服器與jQuery為其 client Javascript library. MediaWiki的開發主要由維基媒體（Wikimedia）支助，不過志願社區參與的開發者們也十分重要.

本頁會教導您一步步成為MediaWiki的貢獻者 It is not a tutorial; it just points you to various places where you can go learn whatever is necessary.

入门
Start by registering for  and reading the Gerrit tutorial. Then you can move on to downloading our code, making changes, testing them, and submitting patches. 共有兩種方法架設您的開發環境：使用預設虛擬機器（vagrant），或手動.

虛擬機器與Vargant

 * 安裝Vagrant - 這些步驟會安裝MediaWiki伺服器於所有符合需求的Linux虛擬機器（可用於Linux、Windows，或Mac hosts）

手动安装

 * 安裝需求 — 檢查硬體需求後，請安裝LAMP、MAMP或WAMP伺服器（Linux、Mac或Windows、plus Apache、MySQL/MariaDB與PHP）.
 * — 於Git下載最新版的原始碼.
 * — 繼續安裝與初始化設定.
 * 架設不同的偵錯模式於您的環境，以提早顯示警告與錯誤.

It's not necessary to download Wikipedia database dumps in order to develop MediaWiki features. In fact, in many cases it's easier to use a near-empty database with a few specially-crafted test pages. However, if for some reason you want to have a copy of Wikipedia, you can get a dump.

推荐阅读


General recommendations
If you choose to work on a bug report that requires writing or changing code, you might want to at least skim these pages first:

 
 * The two main paths to get started with MediaWiki development are to fix an annoying little bug in the existing code, or to add a new feature, usually through a MediaWiki extension.
 * Coding conventions and any subpages relevant to your task (,, , …)
 * Following the Commit message guidelines, especially the Example section at the bottom, will automatically add a notification about your patch to the corresponding report in . Hence there is no need anymore to add a "Please review" comment in the report.
 * Check your code against the pre-commit checklist. Don't skip this step ; you'll be happy you didn't.
 * 获取代码审查. 查找并添加其他人作为你的补丁潜在的审阅人.
 * 修改变更. Don't create a new Gerrit changeset to fix your previous one!
 * In most cases when working with MediaWiki, you do not want to hack MediaWiki core unless you really know what you're doing.

回饋、問題與支援
 
 * You are expected to do some basic research yourself first: Look at the code, try to get some understanding what it is supposed to do, read related documentation, try to find the probable place(s) where you need to make changes in order to fix the bug.
 * If you have general questions about infrastructure, the software architecture or workflows which are not tied to the specific bug that you want to work on, use generic channels like, mailing lists, or wiki discussion pages. For example, if you have a problem with Gerrit, the Gerrit discussion page could be a good place to ask.
 * If you have a specific question about the bug itself, comment in the corresponding report. "What do I have to do to fix this bug?" is not a good question to start with: The more specific your questions are, the more likely somebody can answer them quickly. If you have no idea at all how to fix the bug, maybe that bug is not (yet) for you - please consider finding an easier one first.
 * When asking, elaborate what you have tried and found out already, so others can help at the right level. Try to be specific - for example, copy and paste your commands and their output (if not too long) instead of paraphrasing in your own words. This avoids misunderstandings.
 * Avoid private email or support requests in our social media channels.
 * Please be patient when seeking input and comments. On IRC, don't ask to ask, just ask: most questions can be answered by other community members too if you ask on an IRC channel. If nobody answers, please ask on the bug report or wiki page related to the problem; don't just drop the question.
 * 在了解更多.

Communicate that you work on a bug
You do not need to be set as the assignee in a bug report or announce your plans before you start working on a bug, but it would be welcome. At the latest when you are close to creating a patch for the bug, it is good to announce in a comment that you are working on it. Your announcement also helps others to not work on the bug at the same time and duplicate work.

Also note that if a bug report already has a recent link to a patch in Gerrit and has the project "Patch-For-Review" associated, you should choose a different bug to work on instead - avoid duplicating work. If the patch in Gerrit has not been merged and has not seen any changes for a long time, you could also pick up that existing patch and try to improve it.

If you stop working on a task you should remove yourself as the assignee of a bug report and reset the assignee to the default assignee, so others know that they can work on the bug report and don't expect you to still work on it.

By communicating early you will get more attention, feedback and help from community members. 

Working on extensions
If you choose to work on MediaWiki extensions code, the following links provide more information.


 * MediaWiki extensions primers:
 * Developing extensions — How to write an extension for MediaWiki.
 * Writing an extension for deployment — If you intend to have your extension deployed on Wikimedia sites (including possibly Wikipedia), additional scrutiny is warranted in terms of performance and security.
 * Extension writing tutorial


 * MediaWiki extensions resources:
 * List of simple extensions — A simple way to become more familiar with how extensions work.
 * A brief introduction to MediaWiki extension development — A video presentation about how to create a MediaWiki extension (slides).
 * Making a MediaWiki extension — Covers how to develop an extension for Mediawiki, best practices, and how to engage the Mediawiki community. From February 2011.
 * Special page template — Add a special page to display some handy information.
 * Extending wiki markup — Add a parser hook to modify the content of wikitext.

PHP
MediaWiki is written in PHP, so you'll need to get familiar with PHP to hack MediaWiki's core.


 * Learn PHP
 * PHP tutorial — Available in many different languages. If you have no knowledge of PHP but know how to program in other object-oriented programming languages, PHP will be easy for you to learn.
 * PHP Programming at Wikibooks.
 * PHP topic at Wikiversity.


 * PHP resources:
 * The PHP manual — Available in many different languages.
 * PHP coding conventions within the MediaWiki community.


 * Stuff to know:
 * The script  in MediaWiki provides a basic PHP interpreter with MediaWiki objects and classes loaded.

Database
Many features require some amount of database manipulation, so you'll often need to be familiar with MySQL/MariaDB.


 * Learn MySQL/MariaDB
 * MySQL tutorial — From the MySQL 5.0 reference manual.
 * MySQL at Wikibooks.


 * MySQL/MariaDB resources
 * MySQL Reference Manuals — Available in many different languages.
 * MariaDB Knowledge Base
 * Database coding conventions within the MediaWiki community.


 * Stuff to know:
 * Test your code with MySQL/MariaDB.
 * MediaWiki currently uses MySQL and MariaDB as the primary database back-end. It also supports other DBMSes, such as PostgreSQL and SQLite. However, almost all developers use MySQL/MariaDB and don't test other DBs, which consequently break on a regular basis. You're therefore advised to use MySQL/MariaDB when testing patches, unless you're specifically trying to improve support for another DB. In the latter case, make sure you're careful not to break MySQL/MariaDB (or write queries that are horribly inefficient in it), since MySQL/MariaDB is what everybody else uses.

JavaScript and CSS
JavaScript and CSS have become omnipresent in front-end code. You don't have to be familiar with JavaScript, jQuery and CSS to work on MediaWiki, but you might need to, depending on what you choose to work on.


 * Learn JavaScript and CSS
 * JavaScript and CSS at Wikibooks.
 * Getting Started with jQuery — A jQuery tutorial.


 * JavaScript and CSS resources
 * JavaScript coding conventions within the MediaWiki community.
 * CSS coding conventions within the MediaWiki community.

MediaWiki
The MediaWiki code base is large and some parts are ugly; don't be overwhelmed by it. When you're first starting off, aim to write features or fix bugs which are constrained to a small region of code.


 * MediaWiki primers and must-reads:
 * MediaWiki architecture — A high-level overview of the main components of MediaWiki and how they work with each other.
 *  — An overview of why and how to write secure code.


 * MediaWiki resources:
 * — A list of important files and links to more detailed information.
 * — A list of hooks. If you're trying to find what part of the codebase does something, often a good place to start is by searching for the related hooks.
 * — An overview of general coding conventions within the MediaWiki community.
 * — Ways to hack MediaWiki, from user preferences to extensions and core.
 * Code documentation — Automatically generated documentation from the code and code comments.
 * — A guide to debugging MediaWiki.
 * — A tool to interact with MediaWiki objects live.