Infrastructure

Installing nodejs: https://nodesource.com/blog/nodejs-v012-iojs-and-the-nodesource-linux-repositories
Read section Installing Node.js v0.12 Debian / Ubuntu repository

As for using Visual editor when creating a new page, it seems the only solution is this hack: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Extension_talk:VisualEditor/Enable_Visual_Editor_for_%27create%27_page/reply_(9)

The Parsoid instructions talk about having to do a manual install "if your distribution is older & doesn't have nodejs >= 0.8 available", but this shouldn't be a problem even with the VM having Ubuntu 12.04, as Nodesource packages the latest nodejs for 12.04.
Note the edutechwiki has the best instructions for configuring Parsoid.

Beluga Beluga wrote:

As for using Visual editor when creating a new page, it seems the only solution is this hack: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Extension_talk:VisualEditor/Enable_Visual_Editor_for_%27create%27_page/reply_(9)

Got this info from #wikimedia-dev: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T55441 <- that is unresolved and discussion has stalled
More from IRC: "It looks like action=edit is hardcoded into MW in a few places, so it's not exactly VE's fault"

So it seems that hack is indeed our best bet.

Just for the reference: as a smaller workaround i have installed another extension to get mediawiki syntax highlight. :-)

I do not have forgotten that ticket.

ETA when tdfwiki is on 1.25 and on it's own vm

Parsoid is being moved to the MediaWiki core and being ported from JS to PHP: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsing/Notes/Moving_Parsoid_Into_Core/Porting
Porting to PHP will naturally make it way less complicated to deploy. Moreover, when it goes into core, everyone will get it without any need to explicitly install it.
They have been working on it for a year as far as I can tell.

Talk from Feb 2019:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/The_Long_And_Winding_Road_To_Making_Parsoid_The_Default_MediaWiki_Parser.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQGfuLP9MqA

In the talk slide 60 there is this optimistic prediction:
"Finish Parsoid/PHP port + take Parsoid/JS out of service: Another 4-6 calendar months?"
I has been 9 months. Anyway, patches are going in every day: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/projects/mediawiki/services/parsoid,dashboards/default

The PHP port is now done: https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2020/02/12/parsoid-in-php-or-there-and-back-again/
They are now tackling the unification of their two wikitext engines and estimate to have a single one in late 2021.

Just a little update, this is actually blocked due to VisualEditor not supporting Translate extension yet. The implementation is finally being work on in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261181

As we track MediaWiki LTS versions, our next upgrade will be to 1.39 which due in late 2022: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle#Versions_and_their_end-of-life

By then we should have VE and Translate playing nicely and any UX issues figured out.