Requests for comment/Proper command-line runner for maintenance tasks

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Background
MediaWiki maintenance scripts are used ...

Problem
is a mess: it contains over 150 PHP scripts, which range from essential to obscure or obsolete, with no sign-posts to guide the user to the one she needs or to facilitate discovery. Were the README and online documentation comprehensive and current, they would still not be an adequate substitute for a good command-line interface.

Proposal
This RFC proposes to introduce a top-level command-line entry-point to MediaWiki which would provide access to individual maintenance tasks via subcommands. If the user does not specify a subcommand, a listing of the most commonly-used maintenance script should be enumerated, with appropriate in-line help, and presented to the user along with a tip on how to access detailed help for a particular subcommand.

This proposal could be implemented simply and without breaking backward-compatibility. The maintenance/ file hierarchy will stay and users will continue to be able to execute maintenance scripts directly. (This guarantee should not extend to future maintenance tasks, as a way of gradually driving users to adopt the top-level entry-point.) And eventually the old entry points will be removed.

The scaffolding for this design is the existing Maintenance class hierarchy, which already does most of the heavy lifting we need.