RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals
   4 setting since version 1.2.0. If you have it on, turn it *off* if you can.
   5
   6 == MediaWiki 1.14 ==
   7
   8 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
   9
  10 MediaWiki is now using a "continuous integration" development model with
  11 quarterly snapshot releases. The latest development code is always kept
  12 "ready to run", and in fact runs our own sites on Wikipedia.
  13
  14 Release branches will continue to receive security updates for about a year
  15 from first release, but nonessential bugfixes and feature developments
  16 will be made on the development trunk and appear in the next quarterly release.
  17
  18 Those wishing to use the latest code instead of a branch release can obtain
  19 it from source control: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN
  20
  21 === Configuration changes in 1.14 ===
  22 * $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl is an array of namespaces to be exempt from
  23   the effect of the new __INDEX__/__NOINDEX__ magic words.  (Default: null, ex-
  24   empt all content namespaces.)
  25 * $wgForwardSearchUrl has been removed entirely. Documented setting since 1.4
  26   has been $wgSearchForwardUrl.
  27 * (bug 15080) $wgOverrideSiteFeed has been added. Setting either
  28   $wgSiteFeed['rss'] or 'atom' to a URL will override the default Recent Changes
  29   feed that appears on all pages.
  30 * $wgSQLiteDataDirMode has been introduced as the default directory mode for
  31   SQLite data directories on creation. Note this setting is separate from
  32   $wgDirectoryMode, which applies to all normal directories created by MediaWiki.
  33 * $wgGroupsAddToSelf and $wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf now work more like
  34   $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups, where the user must belong to a specified
  35   group in order to add or remove those groups from themselves.
  36   Backwards compatibility is maintained.
  37 * $wgEnablePersistentCookies has been added. Setting to false disables the
  38   setting of persistent cookies. Defaults to true.
  39 * $wgRestrictDisplayTitle controls if the use of the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic
  40   word is restricted to titles equivalent to the actual page title. This
  41   is true per default, but can be set to false to allow any title.
  42
  43 === New features in 1.14 ===
  44
  45 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  46   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  47   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  48 * Configurable er-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  49   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  50   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  51   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  52 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  53   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  54 * Handheld stylesheet options
  55 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  56   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  57   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  58   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  59   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  60 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  61   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  62 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  63   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  64 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  65   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  66 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  67   Special:ListGroupRights
  68 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  69 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  70   the main page to be customized
  71 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  72   the wiki
  73 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  74   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  75   being converted or not
  76 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  77   Patch by Emufarmers
  78 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  79 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  80   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  81   templates to work with that hook.
  82 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  83   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  84 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  85 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  86   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  87 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  88   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  89 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  90   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  91 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  92   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  93 * (bug 14468) Lines in classic RecentChanges and Watchlist have alternating
  94   background colours based on classes "odd" and "even".
  95 * (bug 14187) In Special:Userlogin the buttons "Log in" and "E-mail new
  96   password" now have classes "mw-loginbutton" and "mw-mailmypasswordbutton".
  97 * HTML entities like &nbsp; now work (are not escaped) in edit summaries.
  98 * (bug 13815) In the comment for page moves, use the colon-separator message
  99   instead of a hardcoded colon.
 100
 101 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
 102
 103 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
 104 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
 105   falls back to the user option
 106 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 107 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 108 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 109 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 110 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 111 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 112 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 113 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 114 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 115   no longer redirect to the second link
 116 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 117   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 118   Patch by Max Semenik.
 119 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 120   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 121 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 122   minutes.
 123 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 124   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 125 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 126   entirely, not just the display of it.
 127 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 128   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 129 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 130   ns-special to special pages.
 131 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 132 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 133   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 134   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 135 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 136   again
 137 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 138 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 139   gives results
 140 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 141   contain '/*' in the title
 142 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 143 * (bug 12518) Interwiki userrights now reflects remote groups, not local groups
 144
 145
 146 === API changes in 1.14 ===
 147
 148 * Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now
 149   shown as empty instead of the current time.
 150 * API search now falls back to fulltext search by default when using Lucene
 151   or other engine which doesn't support a separate title search function.
 152   This means you can use API search on Wikipedia without explicitly adding
 153   &srwhat=text to the query.
 154 * Added iiprop=bitdepth to imageinfo and aiprop=bitdepth to allimages
 155 * (bug 14713) API-specific permissions (such as 'writeapi' and 'apihighlimits'
 156   are now listed on action=help
 157 * (bug 15044) Added requestid parameter to api.php to facilitate distinguishing
 158   between requests
 159 * (bug 15048) Added limit field for multivalue parameters to action=paraminfo
 160   output.
 161 * When the limit on multivalue parameters is exceeded, a warning is issued
 162 * list=search doesn't list missing pages any more
 163 * (bug 15178) Added clshow to prop=categories to allow filtering for hidden/
 164   non-hidden categories
 165
 166 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 167
 168 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 169 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 170
 171 (no changes yet)
 172
 173 == Compatibility ==
 174
 175 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 176
 177 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 178 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 179 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 180
 181 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 182 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 183
 184
 185 == Upgrading ==
 186
 187 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 188 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 189 database schema changes.
 190
 191 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 192 new database fields are filled with data.
 193
 194 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 195 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 196 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 197
 198 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 199
 200
 201 === Caveats ===
 202
 203 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 204 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 205 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 206 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 207 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 208
 209 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 210
 211
 212 === Online documentation ===
 213
 214 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 215 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 216 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 217 the public domain) :
 218
 219   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 220
 221
 222 === Mailing list ===
 223
 224 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 225 wikitech-l list:
 226
 227   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 228
 229 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 230
 231   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 232
 233 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 234 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 235
 236
 237 === IRC help ===
 238
 239 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net