The future of wiki.debian.org with MoinMoin 1.9.x

The problem

wiki.debian.org is hosted on wilder.debian.org.

It uses still Python 2 and MoinMoin 1.9.x series

Because of Python 2 EOL, and removed from bullseye, there is no upgrade path to bullseye. It means that these packages are not managed by packaged version of MoinMoin in bullseye or later.

Actual situation

Since Bullseye, python-moinmoin is not installable anymore.

• Moin 1.9.x does not support Python 3.x and only works with Python 2.7.x (and we won't port it to py3).

wiki.debian.org is maintained by DSA, it may be enough to leave it to DSA.

Expected situation

There may be some choices.

1. Migrate MoinMoin 2.0, but it have to pay migration costs.
2. Keep MoinMoin 1.9 with buster

• Migrate MoinMoin 2.0, but it have to pay migration costs.

  • No MoinMoin 2.0 release, we need to package it.

  • Need to content conversion

    • https://moinmo.in/MoinMoin2.0
    • https://moin-20.readthedocs.io/en/latest/admin/upgrade.html

• Keep MoinMoin 1.9 with buster

  • Use until EOL up to 2022
  • Use until EOL LTS up to ~2024 (T.B.D)
  • Use until EOL ELTS up to ~202X (T.B.D) if python-moinmoin is supported. not in supported-packages yet.

In the future, it may be better to migrate to MoinMoin 2.0, but as a conservative approach, it is reasonable to keep MoinMoin 1.9 with buster.

Additional information

In the past, we have a discussion about this topic, but it may not concluded.

• Debian Wiki Migration to MediaWiki

• Future of MoinMoin (Wiki) - EOL of Python 2.7 and lacking Progress in development of MoinMoin 2

NOTE: SytemInfo says that MoinMoin 1.9.9 is used. The latest version is MoinMoin 1.9.11, but Debian's MoinMoin use a patched version which was CVE patch back-ported

UPDATE(July 19, 2025): debian-wiki mailing list was launched. See https://lists.debian.org/debian-wiki/2025/07/threads.html