Talk:Catalyst

Protected Testing Area For Security Patches

I know such a feature would likely complicate this effort substantially, but it'd be really nice if Catalyst could support a protected area (TBD) for testing security patches and features. Currently, we have to test security patches locally, which can be very tedious if the patch requires a more advanced setup closer to Wikimedia production. Or we have to pull a security patch down to an mwdebug host, which can also be problematic if a tester does not have the appropriate on-wiki rights which may potentially be required by the security patch. Anyhow, the Security Team would love to discuss such a feature for Catalyst, so let us know if this seems feasible for now. Thanks. SBassett (talk) 16:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

While a Protected Testing Area would likely fall outside of scope for the prototype. I would be interested in hearing more and incorporating it into the next iteration (hopefully an ongoing product): either here or in a phabricator task. More specifically, what do you mean by a protected testing area? --Stef Dunlap (talk) 17:31, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Status of the Catalyst project

Currently there's not much information about Catalyst available publicly on wikitech. I see lots of activity on the phabricator project and also https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/qte/catalyst/catalyst-api (which isn't linked from anywhere, I had to search on Gitlab).

We're interested in implementing E2E testing using Catalyst in the Ultraviolet userscript on Gitlab CI (see phab:T333548). Is there any planned launch date at the moment, and how can community developers get involved? Additionally, where would we look for any news/updates regarding Catalyst? Sportzpikachu (talk) 09:36, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that our page did not have GitLab repo links. We added them! Catalyst/Patchdemo are now considered "in production", and we'd love you chat with you about supporting your use-case. We don't currently support user scripts explicitly, but that doesn't mean we can't in the future. It's just a matter of priorities and timing. I'd recommend making a Phabricator task on the patchdemo phabricator workbord. SDunlap-WMF (talk) 14:36, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Admin password

What is password to account "Admin" on wikis created in Catalyst? Wargo (talk) 16:09, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

From the output I see at https://patchdemo.wmcloud.org/new.php when creating a new instance, I would expect User:Patch Demo to be the enabled admin rights holder with a password of "patchdemo1". See also https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/qte/catalyst/patchdemo/-/blob/564e71d158b642cc9ad27af13ec8df2887b0604a/new/install.sh#L9-19 -- BryanDavis (talk) 19:05, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

This is Patchdemo. But I ask about Catalyst mode. It creates account named "Admin", not "Patch Demo" and with other password. Wargo (talk) 00:10, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

That was broken at the time. It should be fixed, according to task T384662. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Patch Demo stewardship

Hey :) I'm looking to update the stewardship information about Patch demo that's currently recorded at mw:Developers/Maintainers. Would it be correct to say that there's currently a team stewarding Patch demo - & if so, what would be the correct team to list as stewards?

All the best, —⁠a smart kitten (mw // phab // talk) 18:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @JHuneidi (WMF) in case you know the answer to this question (or know who might) :) Best, —⁠a smart kitten (mw // phab // talk) 11:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging @a smart kitten! Folks working on Catalyst are stewarding Patch Demo as of now. That group is a mix of folks from around mw:Developer_Experience. I just updated mw:Developers/Maintainers with that info. — TCipriani (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Pushing mwcli dev environments to catalyst?

I wonder if catalyst might be a good target to use for being able to push a whole developer environment in a fixed state into shared web accessible location? how can I potentially get started? And what are the limitations? What workloads can I run? ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 11:42, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Addshore this sounds really cool! Since right now, we're deploying environments from a helm chart, I'm not sure what it would look like to try to deploy a local developer environment into a demo. This seems like a big project. Our current priority is getting more extensions/projects onto PatchDemo and Catalyst. I think it's worth starting the conversation in a phab task on the patchdemo workboard , and if you'd like to take a crack at it, we can help you SDunlap-WMF (talk) 14:53, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Do you have a sample of what one of these helm charts looks like?

In order to setup a mwcli dev environment, the only requirements are a single port to be exposed to a known host, docker, docker compose.

A few options would be, have a single pod and container per dev setup, and have access to docker within (via docker in doker).

Another option would be trying out https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/translate-compose-kubernetes/, ultimately I could make the dev env spit out k8s resources to create.

Anyway, I still dont know if this is even a good idea, as the documentation around Catalyst isn't super easy to follow. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 15:17, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Here is the helm chart patchdemo/catalyst uses to deploy mediawiki demos gitlab:repos/test-platform/catalyst/ci-charts.

We agree that there's a need for better documentation for Catalyst/Patchdemo. What areas of documentation would you like to see to help you reason about using patchdemo/catalyst with mw-cli? SDunlap-WMF (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

To really be able to onboard myself quickly and determine what it actually does, I think I would just need a simple tutorial / walkthrough of doing anything with the system in full. Deploy a single container for example, that is a hello world web app. But I wouldn't really know where to get started with that with accounts, api locations, formats, where to look etc. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 08:07, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

Automatic removal of patchdemo wikis?

Hi. One of demo wiki I used was removed. Was this an automatic removal?

Is it because an older, legacy demo was linked to the patch (and the newer demo was the one that got deleted)? I’m not sure how this works. In the old version, I think it didn’t automatically delete the wiki, but maybe there are some auto-deletion rules now? I don’t know what happened there, whether it can be prevented, or what to expect in the future.

Also, can the wiki be restored? I had some examples there that I didn’t keep a copy of. Nux (talk) 20:49, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Nux, I'm very sorry your demo environment was deleted. We're not 100% sure why your demo was deleted. It may have been a casualty when we were implementing our "expiring demos" feature to effectively manage resources by deleting demos that are no longer needed. We've made phab:T401728 a task to start auditing who or what deleted an environment, so we'll be able to have better answers in the future. There is, unfortunately, no way to recover a deleted demo at this time. Again, we're very sorry this happened, and we're working to make sure it's very clear to users if/when their demo is expiring and going to be deleted.

We've added documentation around the new rules for automatically expiring demos. Please let me know if you have any questions.

One more time, sorry. Thanks for using patchdemo. 🩶 SDunlap-WMF (talk) 20:07, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

@SDunlap-WMF thank you for that. I think it would be best to notify creators of the demo before delete (perhaps by email). Just to make sure they can backup demo data (export templates etc). Nux (talk) 10:53, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

That's great feedback. We created the task phab:T401929 to track that feature request. Thank you 🩶 SDunlap-WMF (talk) 15:22, 14 August 2025 (UTC)