Bug: New MediaWiki installation overwrites old configuration files, does not take care of additional directories too

[Evgueny Antonoff]

Problem: 
MediaWiki installation should take care of old configuration files, when old
version is found. Also additional directories from old installation were not
moved to the new installation directory too. Also the symlink created by my old
installation of mediawiki was left unupdated.

Solution: 
New installation should at least offer to back-up the old config files, better
is to offer a "Replace (Y/N)" dialog and best is to diff the old and new files,
show the diff to the user and ask to apply it to the new config files. It
should also check for upload/ and images/ (probably other additional
directories) and copy them to the new installation directory. My old
installation also created a symlink  /var/www/mediawiki pointing to my
installation /var/lib/mediawiki1.10, which after upgrade is nice to be made
pointing to the new installation.

Details:
Just upgraded my whole Ubuntu from 7.10 to 8.04 and it upgraded my other
packages as well. I had MediaWiki 1.10, which the installer upgraded to 1.11.2.
I lost my old configuration files and it was very frustrating.

Just to mention that on that same Ubuntu upgrade, I did today, Apache
installation showed me the diff of the old and new config files and asked me
should it keep the old files so I take decision on what to do.

I also had upload/ and images/ directories created by the old MediaWiki
installation, since I have uploads enabled, as well as images uploaded already.
These were not moved to the new installation directory.

Well, what I did to fix all this was to manually edit again LocalSettings.php
and manually move upload/ and images/ to the new location, as well as manually
made the symlink to point to the new installation. But this is frustrating.

Please fix this.
Thanks.

PS: I send this to you since as visible from apt-cashe show it was pointed out to 
write this email for bugs. If wrong place, please excuse and tell me where to submit.


My package:

/var/www/mediawiki$ apt-cache show mediawiki
Package: mediawiki
Priority: optional
Section: universe/web
Installed-Size: 19152
Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers <ubuntu-motu at lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Mediawiki Maintenance Team <pkg-mediawiki-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: all
Version: 1:1.11.2-2
Depends: apache2 | httpd, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, mime-support, php5, php5-mysql | php5-pgsql
Recommends: mysql-server | postgresql-8.1, php5-cli
Suggests: clamav, mediawiki-math, memcached, php5-gd | imagemagick
Filename: pool/universe/m/mediawiki/mediawiki_1.11.2-2_all.deb
Size: 4868720
MD5sum: b0399ff48af0a42927ba6c514bcb6d16
SHA1: 3e8f825a7f7241af430c45fa2aa4ad17285d6add
SHA256: bd1f43133ad3ffce8198489f3c34b466f54f347ca84231097229b4b62c43c159
Description: website engine for collaborative work
 MediaWiki is a wiki engine (a program for creating a collaboratively
 edited website). It is designed to handle heavy websites containing
 library-like document collections, and supports user uploads of
 images/sounds, multilingual content, TOC autogeneration, ISBN links,
 etc.
 .
 Moreover, it keeps track of changes, so users can receive
 notifications, view diffs and revert edits. This system has many
 other features and can easily be extended.
Homepage: http://www.mediawiki.org/
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu


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