Hey, we're currently considering an RFC regarding of what to do with
mbstring support in MediaWiki:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T129435
In a nutshell: mbstring is a PHP extension that adds support for Unicode
string operations. MediaWiki requires it to function, however not every PHP
install in existence has it. MediaWiki in those situations either creates
slow PHP-only replacements or just crashes. In the RFC, 2 possibilities are
discussed:
* MediaWiki requires mbstring and doesn't work without it.
* MediaWiki uses a polyfill library to consistently override all mbstring
functions if they're absent, at the cost of string operations being 10-100
times slower (basically, what it currently does but more consistently and
code is maintained by a third party).
We would like more input on this issue from third-party MediaWiki operators:
* Do you currently have mbstring installed?
* If not, how hard would it be for you to install it?
* Do you think it's worth it to force users to have mbstring in order to
guarantee good performance?
Please comment on the Phabricator task.
--
Best regards,
Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])