We have version wise product documentation and new version if document is released with every version. We want to know what is best way to do in Mediawiki and in Mediawiki with every release we will have to create a copy of database and war folder which will eventually result into huge database.
Thanks in advance.
MediaWiki only stores references to uploaded files inside the database. E.g. a page inside the Image: namespace will be created on th first upload of a new image. Also there will be a row in the image table. All these database records do not really have a notable size. Creating an article with a long text will increase database size more.
The files themselves will be saved inside the file system of the server, most likely inside the images/ folder. You can upload new versions "over" the old version of a file. Or you can upload them as "new" files - under a new name.
In any case, the new and the old file will stay inside the file system. What would be possible is to use the eraseArchivedFile.php maintenance script. This script can be used on archived files. This archiving will not actually remove the file from the file system. The maintenance script however will permanently remove the old version of an archived file. In that case, the file will be removed from the file system. This process is not recoverable. So the size of the installation will go down, but the old version of the file will be gone.
Thanks for reply!
The way we want to work with versions is:
If URL is v6/somoepage then it goes to documentation of software V6
If url is v9/somepage then it goes to documentation of software V7
I heard a discussion at EMWCon Spring 2017 about how a company was using PonyDocs (an extension to MW with their customizations) to maintain references to different versions. Perhaps they could help you with what you want?
(They mentioned they wanted to make their changes available, but needed a use case. You seem to have one.)
