Development guidelines

The mw>Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki|MediaWiki software is developed collaboratively by people from all around the world. To help facilitate this process, standards of desirable practices have been established.

The "dev-policies>Special:MyLanguage/Development_policy|policies" describe what developers must do, and the development "guidelines" typically describe what developers generally should do. There can be no deviations from policies; but minor deviations from guidelines, like cod-conv>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Coding conventions|coding conventions, can often be allowed based on individual circumstances. Whether there is good reason for a given deviation that is worth the downsides of conformity to the established norms is a matter for judgment of developers and their code reviewers.