RELEASE-NOTES-1.27

   1 Security reminder: If you have PHP's register_globals option set, you must
   2 turn it off. MediaWiki will not work with it enabled.
   3
   4 == MediaWiki 1.27 ==
   5
   6 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
   7
   8 MediaWiki 1.27 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in
   9 production.
  10
  11 === Configuration changes in 1.27 ===
  12 * $wgUseLinkNamespaceDBFields was removed.
  13 * Deprecated $wgResourceLoaderMinifierStatementsOnOwnLine and
  14   $wgResourceLoaderMinifierMaxLineLength, because there was little value in
  15   making the behavior configurable. The default values (`false` for the former,
  16   1000 for the latter) are now hard-coded.
  17 * $wgDebugDumpSqlLength was removed (deprecated in 1.24).
  18 * $wgDebugDBTransactions was removed (deprecated in 1.20).
  19 * $wgUseXVO has been removed, as it provides functionality only used by
  20   custom Wikimedia patches against Squid 2.x that probably noone uses in
  21   production anymore. There is now $wgUseKeyHeader that provides similar
  22   functionality but instead of the MediaWiki-specific X-Vary-Options header,
  23   uses the draft Key header standard.
  24 * $wgScriptExtension (and support for '.php5' entry points) was removed. See the
  25   deprecation notice in the release notes for version 1.25 for advice on how to
  26   preserve support for '.php5' entry points via URL rewriting.
  27 * Password handling via the User object has been deprecated and partially
  28   removed, pending the future introduction of AuthManager. In particular:
  29 ** expirePassword(), getPasswordExpireDate(), resetPasswordExpiration(), and
  30    getPasswordExpired() have been removed. They were unused outside of core.
  31 ** The mPassword, mNewpassword, mNewpassTime, and mPasswordExpires fields are
  32    now private and will be removed in the future.
  33 ** The getPassword() and getTemporaryPassword() methods now throw
  34    BadMethodCallException and will be removed in the future.
  35 ** The ability to pass 'password' and 'newpassword' to createNew() has been
  36    removed. The only users of it seem to have been using it to set invalid
  37    passwords, and so shouldn't be greatly affected.
  38 ** setPassword(), setInternalPassword(), and setNewpassword() have been
  39    deprecated, pending the introduction of AuthManager.
  40 ** User::randomPassword() is deprecated in favor of a new method
  41    PasswordFactory::generateRandomPasswordString()
  42 ** User::getPasswordFactory() is deprecated, callers should just create a
  43    PasswordFactory themselves.
  44 ** A new constructor, User::newSystemUser(), has been added to simplify the
  45    creation of passwordless "system" users for logged actions.
  46 * $wgMaxSquidPurgeTitles was removed.
  47 * $wgAjaxWatch was removed. This is now enabled by default.
  48 * $wgUseInstantCommons now hotlinks Commons images by default instead of
  49   downloading originals and thumbnailing them locally. This allows wikis to save
  50   on CPU and bandwidth while reducing time to first byte for pages, even without
  51   a thumbnail handler. See $wgForeignFileRepos documentation for tweaks.
  52 * (T27397) WebP is enabled by default as an uploadable filetype.
  53 * (T48998) $wgArticlePath must now be either a full url, or start with a "/".
  54 * $wgRateLimitLog was removed; use $wgDebugLogGroups['ratelimit'] instead.
  55 * Deprecated API formats dbg, txt, and yaml have been removed.
  56 * CLDRPluralRule* classes have been replaced with wikimedia/cldr-plural-rule-parser.
  57 * Removed $wgProfilePerHost, $wgUDPProfilerHost, $wgUDPProfilerPort,
  58   $wgUDPProfilerFormatString, $wgStatsMethod, $wgAggregateStatsID, $wgStatsFormatString,
  59   and $wgProfileCallTree (deprecated since 1.20).
  60
  61 === New features in 1.27 ===
  62 * $wgDataCenterId and $wgDataCenterRoles where added, which will serve as
  63   basic configuration settings needed for multi-datacenter setups.
  64   $wgDataCenterUpdateStickTTL was also added.
  65 * Added a new hook, 'UserMailerTransformContent', to transform the contents
  66   of an email. This is similar to the EmailUser hook but applies to all mail
  67   sent via UserMailer.
  68 * Added a new hook, 'UserMailerTransformMessage', to transform the contents
  69   of an emai after MIME encoding.
  70 * Added a new hook, 'UserMailerSplitTo', to control which users have to be
  71   emailed separately (ie. there is a single address in the To: field) so
  72   user-specific changes to the email can be applied safely.
  73 * $wgCdnMaxageLagged was added, which limits the CDN cache TTL
  74   when any load balancer uses a DB that is lagged beyond the 'max lag'
  75   setting in the relevant section of $wgLBFactoryConf.
  76 * User::newSystemUser() may be used to simplify the creation of passwordless
  77   "system" users for logged actions from scripts and extensions.
  78 * Extensions can now return detailed error information via the API when
  79   preventing user actions using 'getUserPermissionsErrors' and similar hooks
  80   by using ApiMessage instances instead of strings for the $result value.
  81 * $wgAPIMaxLagThreshold was added to limit bot changes when databases lag
  82   becomes too high.
  83 * Skins and extensions can now use FlexBox mixins (.flex-display(@display: flex)
  84   and .flex(@grow: 1, @shrink: 1, @width: auto, @order: 1)) in Less to create
  85   cross-browser-compatible FlexBox rules. Users will still need to add fallback
  86   float rules or the like for compatibility with IE9- separately.
  87 * Added MWTimestamp::getTimezoneString() which returns the localized timezone
  88   string, if available. To localize this string, see the comments of
  89   $wgLocaltimezone in includes/DefaultSettings.php.
  90 * Added CentralIdLookup, a service that allows extensions needing a concept of
  91   "central" users to get that without having to know about specific central
  92   authentication extensions.
  93 * $wgMaxUserDBWriteDuration added to limit huge user-generated transactions.
  94   Regular web request transactions that takes longer than this are aborted.
  95
  96 === External library changes in 1.27 ===
  97 ==== Upgraded external libraries ====
  98 * Updated oojs/oojs-ui from v0.12.12 to v0.13.3.
  99 * Updated composer/semver from v1.0.0 to v1.2.0.
 100 * Update liuggio/statsd-php-client to 1.0.18.
 101
 102 ==== New external libraries ====
 103 * Added wikimedia/base-convert v1.0.1.
 104 * Added wikimedia/cldr-plural-rule-parser v1.0.0.
 105 * Added wikimedia/relpath v1.0.3.
 106 * Added wikimedia/running-stat v1.1.0.
 107
 108 ==== Removed and replaced external libraries ====
 109
 110 === Bug fixes in 1.27 ===
 111 * Special:Upload will now display correct maximum allowed file size when running
 112   under HHVM (T116347).
 113
 114 === Action API changes in 1.27 ===
 115 * Added list=allrevisions.
 116 * generator=recentchanges now has the option to generate revids.
 117 * ApiPageSet::setRedirectMergePolicy() was added. This allows generator
 118   modules to define how generator data for a redirect source gets merged
 119   into the redirect destination.
 120 * prop=imageinfo&iiprop=uploadwarning will no longer include the possibility of
 121   "was-deleted" warning.
 122 * Added difftotextpst to query=revisions which preforms a pre-save transform on
 123   the text before diffing it.
 124 * Deprecated formats dbg, txt, and yaml have been removed.
 125 * (T47988) The protect log event details now use new-style formatting.
 126
 127 === Action API internal changes in 1.27 ===
 128 * ApiQueryORM removed.
 129 * The following classes have been removed:
 130 ** ApiFormatDbg
 131 ** ApiFormatTxt
 132 ** ApiFormatYaml
 133 * ApiQueryBase::getDirectionDescription is now marked as deprecated. It should
 134   have been so marked since 1.25 when ApiBase::getParamDescription was
 135   deprecated, but was overlooked at the time.
 136
 137 === Languages updated in 1.27 ===
 138
 139 MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated
 140 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 141 changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.
 142
 143 * (T113688) Change default numerals from Gurmukhi to Arabic for Punjabi locale.
 144
 145 === Other changes in 1.27 ===
 146 * ProfilerOutputUdp was removed. Note that there is a ProfilerOutputStats class.
 147 * WikiPage::doDeleteArticleReal() and WikiPage::doDeleteArticle() now
 148   ignore the 2nd and 3rd arguments (formerly $id and $commit).
 149 * Removed "loaderScripts" option from ResourceLoaderFileModule class.
 150 * Removed ORM-like wrapper added in 1.20.
 151 * LinkCache::getGoodLinks and LinkCache::getBadLinks were removed (deprecated in 1.26).
 152 * WikiPage::doQuickEdit() was removed (deprecated since 1.21).
 153 * Removed SiteObject and SiteArray classes (deprecated in 1.21).
 154 * MessageBlobStore::getInstance() was removed (deprecated since 1.25).
 155 * (T84937) Free external links ("autolinked" urls) will now be terminated
 156   by &nbsp; and HTML entity encodings of &nbsp, <, and >.
 157 * (T36948) The default file revert message's timestamp is now in $wgLocaltimezone,
 158   instead of UTC.
 159 * The default name of the 'suppress' group page has been changed from
 160   'Project:Oversight' to 'Project:Suppress'.
 161 * DatabaseBase::resultObject() is now protected (use outside Database classes
 162   not necessary since 1.11).
 163 * Calling ResourceLoaderFileModule::readStyleFiles() without a
 164   ResourceLoaderContext instance is deprecated.
 165 * ResourceLoader::getLessCompiler() now takes an optional parameter of
 166   additional LESS variables to set for the compiler.
 167 * wfBaseConvert() marked as deprecated, use Wikimedia\base_convert() directly instead.
 168 * Obsolete maintenance scripts clearCacheStats.php and showCacheStats.php
 169   were removed. The underlying data is sent to StatsD (see $wgStatsdServer).
 170
 171 == Compatibility ==
 172
 173 MediaWiki 1.27 requires PHP 5.3.3 or later. There is experimental support for
 174 HHVM 3.3.0.
 175
 176 MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but
 177 support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for
 178 Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.
 179
 180 The supported versions are:
 181
 182 * MySQL 5.0.3 or later
 183 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
 184 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
 185 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 186 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)
 187
 188 == Upgrading ==
 189
 190 1.27 has several database changes since 1.26, and will not work without schema
 191 updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision
 192 table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site,
 193 many hours on a large site).
 194
 195 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons
 196 repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise
 197 due to database schema changes.
 198
 199 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 200 new database fields are filled with data.
 201
 202 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to
 203 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed
 204 with MediaWiki 1.21.
 205
 206 Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 207
 208 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 209
 210 For notes on 1.26.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 211
 212 == Online documentation ==
 213
 214 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on
 215 MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except
 216 for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
 217
 218        https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 219
 220 == Mailing list ==
 221
 222 A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
 223
 224        https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 225
 226 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 227
 228        https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 229
 230 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 231 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 232
 233 == IRC help ==
 234
 235 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.