Author: nickpj
Description:
During wiki installation, the user has to specify an administrative database account for initializing the database.
We also ask people to use the latest stable MediaWiki version for new wikis, and to keep up with security updates for current wikis. It would probably also be nice if people could upgrade to the latest major release with the absolute minimum of hassle.
One way of making upgrades a bit easier is by saving the administrative database details into config/AdminSettings.php during installation, in the same way that we create config/LocalSettings.php during installation. This is because AdminSettings.php is required for running the maintenance/update.php and maintenance/refreshLinks.php scripts on a version upgrade. However, most people don't find this out at the time of creating their wiki - rather they find it out 3 or 6 months later when they want to upgrade, and by then they can't easily remember the administrative database details, or they can't find them because the dog ate the bit of paper with that information on it.
If we saved the details in config/AdminSettings.php during setup, then people could delete that directory and this file if they did not want it, or they could move it into the parent directory along with LocalSettings.php. Alternatively, if there are security concerns about saving the details in AdminSettings.php without the user's explicit say-so, then make it a checkbox during the setup process, so that the user has to opt-in. But anything we can do to make it a little bit easier to set up and upgrade MediaWiki has got to be a good thing, surely?
Version: 1.13.x
Severity: enhancement