User Story

As a new platform engineer, I need orientation on MediaWIki development process, tools and workflows, so I can get up to speed in advance of work on T306349 Public-facing API for image suggestions data

Why?

While we continue to scope the requirements for the public facings image suggestions API, we determined that the most future proof approach is doing it in MW Growth Experiments extension. Working in Mediawiki requires special orientation.

Done is:

• Review the New Developers page on mediawiki.org (even if you did this during orientation, it is worth a second look)
• Review the How to become a MediaWiki hacker page on mediawiki.org. Ignore the part about setting up your development environment. We'll do that differently below
• Review the Gerrit Tutorial on mediawiki.org. Perform the indicated installations and configurations. You don't have to submit a patch to anything.
• Review our PHP Coding Conventions
• If you don't already have a PHP IDE installed, then install one of your choice. WMF developers get PhpStorm for free if you like.
• Create a local MediaWiki installation using mwcli. Bonus points if you find the hidden game.
• Install the GrowthExperiments extension on your local wiki.
• Make a small change of your choice to your local wiki. Whatever you like, print your name at the top of each page, output some debug text, whatever you like. The purpose is to ensure that your coding workflow is functional.
• Revert whatever change you made so that your git status is clean

At the end of all this, you should have a working local wiki with GrowthExperiments installed, and all the basic prerequisites for submitting a change.