Topic on Template talk:Extension

Look at Extension:Echo. The infobox informs that required MediaWiki version is 1.40, because the template fetches the thing from the master branch. But production wikis, in this case, use other branches (releases). Shouldn’t your template be foolproof against showing development versions by default on |mediawiki=?

With compatibility policy = rel, data from extension.json shouldn't matter, because each branch is created for each release. Minimum MediaWiki version should be added manually to the template, to specify the first MediaWiki version where the extension was available.

For the Extension:Echo page, version was removed by @Kghbln in Special:Diff/5323592. I don't know it this has been removed extensively, though.

I believe that the plan here is to document the latest version compatibility of the extension; at least, I have been told so by I cannot remember who it was. Actually, it was different people over time. In the end, I agree since there are always older versions around. You just have to look for them specifically. The existence of them could indeed be specified in a separate field (first MediaWiki version) which we do not have at hand, or perhaps easier, add a note to the existing field indicating that a version compatible with older versions of MediaWiki is potentially sticking around. Before I forget: Yes relying on extension.json is done extensively.

I'm not sure having this field in the infobox makes sense at all. Knowing what the master version of the extension supports for mediawiki doesn't seem useful when there are release branches. Maybe we just shouldn't have this field in the infobox.

We don't really have a good story around different versions of extensions. I'm not sure what the solution is.

MediaWiki version should be hidden when compatibility policy is set to rel or ltsrel. However, I think extensions using compatibility policy of master should have this field visible and populated from extension.json as it is now.

I agree with Ciencia here, as a maintainer of extensions with master compatibility policy.

It reads like we are getting somewhere. Agree with Cienca's suggestion. While we are at it we could also do this for the PHP requirement.

Maybe we should label these fields as "for the current development branch" for clarity?

Better than the current misleading thing. But why don’t show some (pseudo)graphic indicating which (extant) versions of MediaWiki are supported by any branch? This would require fetching extension.json from several branches, of course.