Development policy

The development policy defines how 1>Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Technical Committee/Charter#Areas within scope|Wikimedia software is developed and maintained.

This includes MediaWiki core, the 1>Special:MyLanguage/Bundled extensions and skins|bundled skins and extensions, as well as other skins and extensions that are deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis.

High-level
All Wikimedia engineering endeavors are guided by the 1>Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Engineering Architecture Principles|Architecture principles.

Creation of new services that are external to MediaWiki, should follow the 1>Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia services policy|Services policy

Runtime support
Changes to PHP support in MediaWiki core or components bundled with official MediaWiki releases, must follow the .

Code review
Privileged Gerrit users must follow the 1>Special:MyLanguage/Gerrit/Privilege_policy|Gerrit privilege policy when exercising their +2 rights.

Implementation policies
Changes to MediaWiki core that have impact on extensions must follow the .

Database queries and schema changes must follow the .

PHP's built in serialization mechanism (the   and  </> functions) should not be used for data stored (or read from) outside of the current process (RFC <tvar|3>T161647</>).

See also the 1>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Coding_conventions/PHP#Don't_use_built_in_serialization</>|relevant section of the PHP coding convention