Topic on Extension talk:MobileFrontend

When the software is downloaded through git apparently a version is installed that requires the Mantle extension. There is nothing however in the documentation about this. And installing the Mantle extension is not described as well.

Yes, the actual MobileFrontend (from git master) requires the Extension Mantle. I will add this to the Extension page, thanks!

Just as info for you: Simply download the Extension (from Extension page) and add this line to your LocalSettings.php:

require_once "$IP/extensions/Mantle/Mantle.php";

• Added Mantle Prerequisites
• Added Installation section to Mantle

Thanks for reporting this!

Thanks! Works fine.

With MediaWiki 1.24 being released yesterday I've started to investigate upgrade steps and I bumped into this new prerequisite. This has me concerned as Extension:Mantle current shows Release status: experimental, rather than stable. We generally don't consider an extension for installation on our wiki unless it has reached stable status. Is there any way to either a) get Mantle to a stable status or b) remove the prerequisite in the REL1_24 branch of MobileFrontend?

Having a mobile friendly solution is critical in this day and age, so it seems were stuck between a rock and hard place with regards to deploying MediaWiki 1.24.

The REL1_23 branch of MobileFrontend still works on MediaWiki 1.24.0 and doesn't requires Mantle.

MobileFrontend requires Mantle (and i really mean require ;)). Sure, it's possible to copy the contents, functions and the entire code of Mantle to MobileFrontend, but it's a lot of work and i'm sure, that the mobile web team doesn't have the resources to that. I'm sure, you can install Mantle without any problems, and if you have some, ask here to find a solution :)

Thanks for the information. I run a small wiki and try to stay current with MediaWiki software releases. When we update our version of MediaWiki, our policy has been to update Extensions to the matching version. Not wanting to live too much on the bleeding edge, our policy on Extensions recommends that we stick to Stable versions that are widely used. As far back as I remember, this is the first time we've run into this type of dependency issue. I would hope that MediaWiki developers would understand the rationale behind these policy decisions and attempt to keep core and extension development in sync so that other sites don't have to follow Wikipedia's software deployment strategy geared towards testing and running software that is under development. In this particular case, the dependence on an Extension with status = experimental is challenging.

Most of the software used by Wikimedia is under active development. Mantle is used on a wide range of Wikipedias and other Wikimedia wikis. I run Mantle, too. Mantle is "just" an extension for code sharing, in fact it contains a merged version of the removed MobileFrontend code to use it in other extensions, too (like Flow). I suggest, that you test Mantle in your test installation, in my opinion there isn't a point for don't use it in production.

P.S.: The development of Wikimedia extensions is kept in sync, all extensions deployed on Wikimedia servers working with the correspending wmf versions (wmf7 e.g. of MobileFrontend works with Mantle wmf7 and ConfirmEdit wmf7 for example and so).

The Mantle extension is still required in current version of MobileFrontend (REL1_24 2014-12-02T00:26:32 011e6c1) but reference to that requirement was dropped from Extension:MobileFrontend page.

Y Readded with the notice, that Mantle is only required for MediaWiki 1.24 and older.