Mok0 at 13:02, 6 September 2026

2026-09-06T13:02:08Z

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	= Welcome to the Debian Development Wiki =		= Welcome to the Debian Development Wiki =
			[[Category:WikiDev]]
	== Getting started ==		== Getting started ==

Mok0: Created page with " = Welcome to the Debian Development Wiki = == Getting started == Debian is converting its wiki to Mediawiki. If you are seeing this page it means you have succesfully installed the WikiDev container image of MediaWiki, which contains a few completely new pages (like the one you are reading now) plus a small number Pages that are downloaded from the old wiki, and converted on-the-fly from MoinMoin to [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikitext Wikitext] (see the list Sp..."

2026-09-06T13:01:34Z

Created page with " = Welcome to the Debian Development Wiki = == Getting started == Debian is converting its wiki to Mediawiki. If you are seeing this page it means you have succesfully installed the WikiDev container image of MediaWiki, which contains a few completely new pages (like the one you are reading now) plus a small number Pages that are downloaded from the old wiki, and converted on-the-fly from MoinMoin to [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikitext Wikitext] (see the list Sp..."

New page

= Welcome to the Debian Development Wiki =

== Getting started ==

Debian is converting its wiki to Mediawiki. If you are seeing this
page it means you have succesfully installed the WikiDev container
image of MediaWiki, which contains a few completely new pages (like
the one you are reading now) plus a small number Pages that are
downloaded from the old wiki, and converted on-the-fly from MoinMoin
to [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikitext Wikitext] (see the list
[[Special:AllPages|here]]). From here on, the MoinMoin wiki, still
alive at https://wiki.debian.org/, will be referred to as “the
old wiki”.

This page introduces what we're doing and how you can help.

=== How the development environment is organized ===

For the time being, during the process of developing the tools, macros
and conversions needed for the big conversion from MoinMoin to
Wikitext, we are using a few software repositories on Salsa to
maintain the tools.

There are three repositories responsible for most of the conversion
work:

==== 1. debwiki-dev-pages ====

The page you are reading can be found in the
[https://salsa.debian.org/wiki-team/debwiki-dev-pages <code>debwiki-dev-pages</code>]
repository on Salsa. It contains pages for the new wiki (this one)
''that are not in the old wiki''. It also contains several templates and
macros which on the
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] platform is
saved as ''Pages''. In fact, everything in Mediawiki is Pages, not only
user content, but also Templates, Forms and other components used to
produce the final site. If you'd like to work with editing pages and/or
creating new content for the new wiki this is where you want to be
working.

==== 2. debwiki-dev-converter ====

The software components doing the under-the-hood conversion work
can be found in the
[https://salsa.debian.org/wiki-team/debwiki-dev-converter <code>debwiki-dev-converter</code>]
repository. Its main function is to convert Debian's old MoinMoin wiki
markup to MediaWiki XML dumps, and will be used when the time comes to
do the grand conversion. Now, we want to stress test it, find issues
and see if improvements are needed, and that is one of the purposes of
this wiki container.

At the moment the <code>debwiki-dev-converter</code> also is responsible for
converting a bunch of sample documents from the old wiki to the new
one, but this functionality will likely be separated out to its own
repository in the future ('''Andrew?'''), so we can keep the conversion
tools separate from the pages to convert. This will also make the
<code>debwiki-dev-converter</code> software generally usable for other
projects that want to do the same conversion.

If you are interested in working on the software that does the
under-the-hood conversion to Wikitext, you need to work on this
repository, and be in close contact with the maintainers.

==== 3. moinmoin_onlinereader ====

Behind the scenes is the
[https://salsa.debian.org/AndrewSayers/moinmoin_onlinereader <code>moinmoin_onlinereader</code>],
this is a software component that does an on-the-fly conversion of the Moin source to a
[https://pandoc.org/ Pandoc]
[https://pandoc.org/using-the-pandoc-api.html Abstract Syntax Tree]
(AST) from the live <code>wiki.debian.org</code> site. The
<code>moinmoin_onlinereader</code> library logs in to the wiki and
asks <code>Pandoc</code> to parse the rendered HTML and render it as
wikitext. When the online reader logs into the Debian wiki, it is
using your credentials, that you used to get this container running.

Unless you are interested in this part of the migration process, this
component is unlikely to be of interest to you.

=== How to work on these repositories ===

The workflow for working with all of the above git repositories is the
typical <code>git</code> workflow used in most open source projects, but we
detail it here in case you need a reminder.

You need an account on [https://salsa.debian.org/ Salsa]. Once logged
on, you can make a ''fork'' of the repository you want to work on.
Clone your fork to your computer and switch to a branch, optimally
named something relevant in relation to the work you want to do.

When done with your work, push the branch back to your repo fork on
Salsa, and then write and submit a Merge Request (MR). Remember that
your description must enable the maintainer to quickly review what
your MR is all about, so be descriptive. Also, remember that ''atomic
merge requests'' are much better than huge ones, and more likely to be
accepted quickly and without a lot of back-and-forth with the
maintainer. Be aware that a MR is like a PR on other platforms like
Github, but it also adds a merge commit to the repo when it's accepted.

Finally, please be aware that it can take up to a few days for your
merge request to get through manual review, so be patient!

== Join us on Internet Relay Chat ==

If you'd like a real-time chat with developers and contributors to the
new wiki, we have an IRC channel on OFTC named `#debian-wiki`, and try
to have a presence there. You are encourged to join. Use any IRC
client of your choice, or click this link: {{DebianIRC|debian-wiki}},
which will open an IRC client in your browser.

== Keeping this development container up-to-date ==

To remind you, when you created this development wiki you pulled an image from
upstream using <code>podman</code>, like this:

<pre>
podman pull registry.salsa.debian.org/wiki-team/debwiki-dev-container:latest
</pre>

At the moment, the content of this wiki is generated by the conversion
system described above when upstream builds the container from the
<code>Dockerfile</code>. The build process quite simply clones the development
repos onto the image, so when you create the <code>podman</code> container these
are already embedded in the image.

So in order to see updates that have happened, you need to pull a new
image regularly. Be aware that old images are not deleted by pulling
new ones, so you still have access to older ones if you so wish, or
you can remove them using the <code>podman</code> utility (or for example
<code>cockpit</code> if you are using that).

Just to remind you, this is how the container (i.e. the running
instance of the image) is created:

<pre>
podman run --rm -i \
-p 8080:80 \
--name=debwiki-dev-environment \
debwiki-dev-environment:latest \
<your-MOINMOIN_SESSION_443_ROOT-value>
</pre>

A detailed description is available in the
[https://salsa.debian.org/wiki-team/debwiki-dev-environment/-/blob/main/README.md|README]
file of the <code>debwiki-dev-environment</code> repo. But then again you
probably know all about that since you got here.

Now the wiki can be viewed on http://localhost:8080/, like you are
doing right now.

== Links ==

These pages are from the old wiki imported to this container image,
and perhaps of interest to the development work, especially focusing
on translating files from MoinMoin system to Mediawiki.

* The Original Introduction to the [[Wiki Revamp|WikiRewamp Project]]
* Other [[DebianWiki/WikiRevamp/OtherConversations|Conversations]]
* Log of the [[DebianWiki/WikiRevamp/MassEditLog|MassEdit]]
* [[DebianWiki/WikiRevamp/Recommendations|Recommendations]]
* A [[DebianWiki/WikiRevamp/TestPage|Testpage]] with a variety of Wikitext code.

Wiki Development Container - Revision history

Mok0 at 13:02, 6 September 2026