Thread:Project:Support desk/MediaWiki v1.19.1 installation: Compilation failed: support for \P, \p, and \X has not been compiled/reply (2)

Ideally the MediaWiki installer would check for this condition and issue a warning and (best) work around the limitation, or (failsafe) if that's not possible then issue a warning and abort the install.

The workaround I opted for is simply an older version of MediaWiki (v1.16.5 installed fine, I didn't try any intermediate versions).