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Bundle MobileFrontend extension with MediaWiki
Open, Needs TriagePublic

Description

  • Passed security review or already Wikimedia deployed
  • Voting CI structure tests
  • Runs MediaWiki-CodeSniffer
  • Runs phan
  • Supports MySQL, SQLite, and Postgres (no schema changes)
  • GPL v2 or later compatible license
  • Extension's default configuration provides optimal experience
  • Tested with web installer

Event Timeline

Change 425016 had a related patch set uploaded (by Gergő Tisza; owner: Gergő Tisza):
[mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend@master] Enable autodetection by default

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/425016

Change 425016 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend@master] Enable autodetection by default

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/425016

CCicalese_WMF renamed this task from Bundle MobileFrontend extension with MW 1.32 to Bundle MobileFrontend extension with MediaWiki.Nov 10 2018, 6:49 PM

Any updates on this one? There don't seem to be any blockers, and I'm not sure how to help.

Hey there. This task is proposed as a blocker to MediaWiki 1.37, which will be cut in less than three weeks' time. Please consider whether this will make that deadline, and if not, move it to block the MediaWiki 1.38 release (MW-1.38-release) or remove as a blocker entirely.

It would be really nice to bundle this as this should have been done a long time ago. I don't think there are any technical blockers? Anything I can help with? I have no idea how this process works..

It would be really nice to bundle this as this should have been done a long time ago. I don't think there are any technical blockers? Anything I can help with? I have no idea how this process works..

See the checkist in general. In this case, someone just needs to test it (download the MediaWiki tarball, download the extension into the extensions directory, run the installer, enable the extension on the installer's additional options page, and see if the wiki works as expected) and report back. It's too late now for 1.37 but there's always another release.

I don't really see the point of bundling MobileFrontend, given that we already bundle multiple responsive skins. Bundling Minerva seems like a good idea (and already has a separate ticket).

None of them are particularly great IMO. Minerva is great on mobile, not so great on desktop. MobileFrontend is needed to be able to use different skins based on your device.

None of them are particularly great IMO. Minerva is great on mobile, not so great on desktop. MobileFrontend is needed to be able to use different skins based on your device.

I don't think you've tried Minerva recently? :) It's pretty much-got feature parity with Vector by default when run without MobileFrontend. We just disable many of its features in Wikimedia projects.

I think having separate mobile experiences is pretty common in MediaWiki instances in the wild. Most MediaWiki instances use Vector as the default skin so need a separate mobile site. I'd hope we'd be data-driven on that one rather than make snap judgements on what we think makes sense for users. Most MediaWiki instances I see seem to have MobileFrontend installed so it feels like we should make this easier.

See the checkist in general.

I've run through the checklist previously and both pass, so that's why I was confused about why this has not happened. What I'm not clear about is how it's added to the bundle.

By adding it to the make-release script (example).

Not happening 1.39 so retagging.

FWIW I'm not sure I'd recommend bundling MobileFrontend for third parties these days. I think the skin options MediaWiki users have are improving and I'd rather focus on us improving those (see T106463 for example).

The main problem MobileFrontend solves are:

  1. transforming HTML for non-mobile friendly templates which are very much fixable by wiki maintainers themselves.
  2. Redirecting to a different skin for mobile traffic which would be better served by T195494.