Developer Satisfaction Survey/2026/Deployment
- βοΈ Cloud Services
- π§βπ» Dev environments
- π§ͺ Shared test environments
- βοΈ Phabricator
- π― Code review
- π Continuous integration
- π Deployment
- π» MediaWiki Core backend
- π APIs
- ποΈ Technical documentation
- π¬ Research needs
- π§ Motivations and challenges
- π Overall
π Developer Satisfaction 2026 Report
π Deployment
[edit ]tl;dr
- SpiderPig β 94% of users are satisfied/0% are dissatisfied.
- SpiderPig has been unreasonably successful in its first full year of operation
- 41% increase in unique deployers, year-over-year
- 59% increase in number of changes backported, year-over-year
- Deployment satisfaction β 66% of respondents said deployments are easy and pain-free. Pretty much flat.
- Kubernetes satisfaction β 62% of respondents said they were satisfied with using Wikimedia Kubernetes down a touch from last year.
# Deployment use in the past year
Of the 56 respondents who opted in to the Deployment section of the survey and answered this question:
- 46% said they used both
- 25% said they used backport windows only
- 18% said they used deployment train only
- 11% said that did not use Wikimedia deployment train or backport windows in the past year
Of the 50 respondents who said they did use Wikimedia deployment train or backport windows in the past year:
- 52% said they used both
- 28% said they used backport windows only
- 20% said they used deployment train only
The majority of MediaWiki Core developers, Mediawiki Extension developers, test engineers, tool developers, and gadget developers who responded said they use both deployment train and backport windows.
# Deployment satisfaction
last year
- A majority (66%) said they agreed that these deployments are easy and pain-free, similar to last year.
- 10% said they neither agreed nor disagreed
- 22% said they disagreed
# Other deployment feedback
last year
Lack of deployers during backport
25% of responses lament the lack of people able to help with their deployments during the backport window.
There are not enough deployers to cover all backport windows 100% of the time. I have repeatedly scheduled changes for deployment, shown up on IRC before the backport window and waited for it to begin, and even 20 minutes after the scheduled time there are still no deployers available, despite that at least three are listed on the deployment schedule as being available to deploy.
The availability of deployers during the backport windows for volunteer developers, like me, is essential. In my experience of scheduling patches for deployment in the past year, I have faced several instances where no deployers were available to help me deploy my patch.
# Kubernetes use in the past year
last year
Of the 106 respondents who opted into the Deployment section of the survey and answered this question, the majority (65%) said they did not deploy software to Wikimediaβs Kubernetes in the past year; 25% said they had; and 10% were unsure.
# Kubernetes satisfaction
last year
Of the survey takers who had used Wikimediaβs production Kubernetes infrastructure during the past year,
- a majority (62%) of respondents said they were satisfied with using Wikimedia Kubernetes, down from 70% last year
- 19% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
- 19% were dissatisfied
# Kubernetes ease of deployment
last year
- 50% agreed that deployments were easy and pain-free
- 12% neither agreed nor disagreed (down from 25% last year)
- 35% disagreed (up from 13% last year)
- 3% were unsure
# SpiderPig use
Of the 48 respondents who opted in to the Deployment section and who answered this question, the majority (58%) said they did not use SpiderPig in the past year; 38% said they did use SpiderPig in the past year; and 4% said they weren't sure.
# SpiderPig satisfaction
Of the 18 respondents who said they did use SpiderPig in the past year,
- 94% said they were satisfied
- 6% said they were neither satisfied or dissatisfied
- 0% said they were dissatisfied
# Other Kubernetes feedback
last year
Debugging/Ease of use
Overall, a small pool of open answers to this question. 33% of them mentioned something related to debugging.
It doesn't quite feel natural, eg I feel like I'm following a recipe carefully as I do service deployments, but it works painlessly and it seems clear enough how to fix a downgrade if necessary (it hasn't been yet). Overall this is a HUGE improvement from the olden days of manual service setup but not quite as easy as SpiderPig.