MoinMoin wikis and Debian 11+

[Greg Wooledge]

As we're nearing the end of life for Debian 10, I'm still wondering
what MoinMoin wiki users are supposed to do. (This includes
<https://wiki.debian.org/> as near as I can see from SystemInfo.)

MoinMoin 1.x requires Python2, and Debian 11 and newer don't have
Python2 any more. They only have Python3.

Should we install Python 2.x from upstream, build it in /usr/local,
figure out all of the modules that are required for MoinMoin, build
those as well, and then symlink /usr/bin/python to our local Python2?

Or is there some path forward from MoinMoin 1.x to 2.x? (Is MoinMoin 2.x
even a functional product?)

Or should we burn the entire site down, migrate to some other wiki
engine (please gods don't let it need PHP), and start all over?

Or should we just keep running Debian 10 past end of life?

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

Post by Greg Wooledge
As we're nearing the end of life for Debian 10, I'm still wondering
what MoinMoin wiki users are supposed to do. (This includes
<https://wiki.debian.org/> as near as I can see from SystemInfo.)
MoinMoin 1.x requires Python2, and Debian 11 and newer don't have
Python2 any more. They only have Python3.
Should we install Python 2.x from upstream, build it in /usr/local,
figure out all of the modules that are required for MoinMoin, build
those as well, and then symlink /usr/bin/python to our local Python2?
Or is there some path forward from MoinMoin 1.x to 2.x? (Is MoinMoin 2.x
even a functional product?)
Or should we burn the entire site down, migrate to some other wiki
engine (please gods don't let it need PHP), and start all over?
Or should we just keep running Debian 10 past end of life?

You could run a Docker container with a Debian 10-based system with only
what you need for MoinMoin 1.x. At least it is more isolated than
installing Python 2.x directly in the system.

But it only postpones the problem (an so do other solutions). Eventually
you'll need to upgrade to a newer version of MoinMoin or switch to a
similar product. I am not familiar with the options, but perhaps another
product can import your data.

[Dan Ritter]

Post by Greg Wooledge
As we're nearing the end of life for Debian 10, I'm still wondering
what MoinMoin wiki users are supposed to do. (This includes
<https://wiki.debian.org/> as near as I can see from SystemInfo.)

...

Post by Greg Wooledge
Or should we burn the entire site down, migrate to some other wiki
engine (please gods don't let it need PHP), and start all over?

https://gitlab.com/anarcat/moin2iki/ converts moinmoin to
ikiwiki. ikiwiki ( https://ikiwiki.info/ ) is written
in Perl, not PHP, and is packaged in Debian 12.

-dsr-

[Richard Hector]

Post by Greg Wooledge
As we're nearing the end of life for Debian 10, I'm still wondering
what MoinMoin wiki users are supposed to do. (This includes
<https://wiki.debian.org/> as near as I can see from SystemInfo.)
MoinMoin 1.x requires Python2, and Debian 11 and newer don't have
Python2 any more. They only have Python3.

Interesting. Python Wiki uses MoinMoin too - presumably on an
unsupported python ... one might have thought that the python community
would have sufficiently motivated python devs to get moin2 sorted. I
wonder what their plans are?

Richard (who endlessly postpones choosing a wiki due to this and similar
issues)