Upgrading

Upgrading this build of MediaWiki is fairly simple, contrary to what you would find from the official MediaWiki upgrade instructions.

We are pulling MediaWiki from the official git repository via these instructions. Similarly, themes and extensions are also pulled from official MediaWiki repositories as are extensions available in this format.

Since I know this system works, there is no sense in re-hashing how to install from scratch.

What is confusing, however, is upgrading, especially when you google "upgrade mediawiki" and come up with this mess of instructions. Hence, here is a boiled down version of what I do to upgrade the Fairy Garden Wiki so that I don't have to remind myself each time.

1. sudo git pull - This sometimes requires a merge of locally edited files, but is otherwise straightforward. This SHOULD also merge in with a local copy that is "ahead of the remote" so long as it is largely unedited.
2. sudo -u www-data composer update --no-dev - They decided to start using composer to manage third-party (vendor) plugins. I'm fine with this, so long as I don't need to think. I always forget to not run composer as root, so make sure this command is more or less run as-is.
3. sudo php maintenance/update.php - This is the part that updates the database. When I tried running just now (2019-01-09), it initially did not work because the composer dependencies had not been updated first.
4. cd extensions/<extension directory>/; sudo git pull; - For each git-supported extension, just run a git pull.
5. cd skins/<skin directory>/; sudo git pull; - For each git-supported skin, also just run a git pull.

And that's it!!