DVCS wiki migration

This page documents an idea for a migration of the Parabola wiki from MediaWiki to a wiki storing its data in a DVCS repository.

Parabola wiki workflow

  • import pages from Arch
  • remove references to nonfree software pages from Arch
  • merge Arch page changes
  • write new pages
  • edit any pages

Why a DVCS wiki?

  • automate import and updates of pages from Arch: have a branch for their original state, merge changes (manually handling conflicts and freedom issues)
  • easy backup and mirroring

Software candidates

Required features

  • reasonable hosting on the repo server
  • git support
  • a Parabola hacker able to modify its code
  • wiki links, correct handling of ones on Arch wiki pages

Plan

  • investigate pandoc's support for MediaWiki -> ReST markup conversion
  • write a script to export MediaWiki XML to a git branch with a commit per edits and target wiki markup language; support reexporting with stable commit hashes
  • decide what features are missing in a candidate wiki and implement them
  • have a test instance with the current wiki data, make it work
  • decide if we do the migration and plan it