Talk:Version lifecycle

MW 1.44 release date and 1.42 EOL delayed?

July is approaching very soon. Are the release date of MediaWiki 1.44 and end of life date for MediaWiki 1.42 pushed back to July? If so, when? Xeverything11 (talk) 16:21, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

1.42 EOL, which is 30 June, has been confirmed today, so no delays. Xeverything11 (talk) 20:01, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

1.44 is certainly delayed, with the release date pushing back into at least July. Xeverything11 (talk) 06:07, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

@Xeverything11: The 1.44 release was added in this edit by @ABreault (WMF) on 2 July. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Translation insanity

This portion of the page is completely ridiculous:

== Versions and their end-of-life == <!--T:4-->
</translate>
{{For|1=<translate><!--T:111--> the complete version history</translate>|2=Release notes}}

{{void|1=
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE FOLLOWING TEXT TO PRESERVE THE CORRESPONDING TRANSLATIONS FOR FUTURE USE.
* <translate><!--T:12--> current version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:113--> current version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:105--> future version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:116--> future version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:120--> future version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:138--> future version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:140--> future version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:15--> legacy version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:114--> legacy version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:128--> legacy version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:144--> legacy stable version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:146--> legacy stable version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:129--> long-term support version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:119--> current long-term support version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:123--> future long-term support version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:112--> obsolete long-term support version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:124--> obsolete long-term support version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:71--> obsolete version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:99--> obsolete version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:121--> stable version</translate>
* <translate><!--T:143--> current stable and long-term support version</translate>

}}[…]

We need to create templates to store these phrases (and their translations), and use them as necessary for the different versions. - dcljr (talk) 03:54, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

@Dcljr: Certainly, we don't need all the duplicates; if T:12 fine, we should drop T:113; similarly with T:105 and T:116/T:120/T:138/T:140. But yes, the entire system is very clunky, and relies on people not just blindly marking things for translation but manually juggling translation tags around. Moving to templated sub-phrases probably is a good idea, yes. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

@Dcljr: The duplication is due to translation admins who create new translation units instead of reusing existing ones. (They kept ignoring repeated requests to reuse them.) All the duplicate translation units have been kept out of respect for the effort put into translating them into many languages.-- Shirayuki (talk) 13:00, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

@Shirayuki: I would say it's not respectful to keep duplicate entries alive when they're never going to be used, however. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 13:59, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

I see two possible approaches:

1. use lots of templates, each containing an entire phrase in their name (e.g., {{MW description current long-term support version}}, etc.)
2. use a single template containing a {{#switch:}} that supports all possible phrases (e.g., {{MW description|current long-term support version}})

I say the latter. The only reason I was thinking the former was that we could reuse templates for single words in those for phrases, and ones for the shorter phrases in those for the longer ones (e.g., the template for "current long-term support version" calls templates for "current", "long-term support", and "version"). Unfortunately, given the vagaries of grammar in various languages, I think this would just increase the effort required to translate into languages whose grammar is very different from English.

However we do this, it's going to call for special attention from many translators to transition to the new scheme in a reasonable amount of time. (If all the instances of these phrases on this and similar pages were done today, who knows how long it would take for the translations to be done "just normally".) Opinions? Caveats? - dcljr (talk) 19:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)