RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 == Version 1.3.0pre-alpha ==
   4
   5 Various things will be happening for 1.3.0...
   6 * More advanced parser
   7 * New schema...
   8 * Magic goodies!
   9 * Included PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
  10 * stuff
  11
  12 == Version 1.2.0 ==
  13
  14 New features in 1.2:
  15 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
  16 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
  17 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
  18 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
  19   may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
  20   (The exact details of this may change in the future)
  21 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
  22 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
  23 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
  24 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
  25 * Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies
  26   (off by default in user preferences)
  27 * Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
  28 * It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki.
  29   An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat"
  30   privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install.
  31
  32 Fixes and tweaks:
  33 * Now works with register_globals off!
  34 * Works with short tags disabled.
  35 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
  36   $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
  37   for a slight rendering speed boost.
  38 * rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or
  39   overwrite everything.
  40 * Various bug fixes.
  41 * Other stuff we forgot.
  42 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!
  43
  44 === Behavior changes ===
  45
  46 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php
  47   The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't
  48   conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
  49 * Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in
  50   DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
  51 * Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can
  52   be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you
  53   don't want the performance hit.
  54
  55 === Database changes ===
  56
  57 An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
  58 (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).
  59
  60 Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
  61 (patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).
  62
  63
  64 == Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==
  65
  66 This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
  67 to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
  68 release.
  69
  70 New features in 1.1:
  71 * New wiki table syntax:
  72   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
  73 * User-editable interface messages:
  74   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
  75 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
  76   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
  77   (There is not yet an import function!)
  78 * "Magic words"
  79
  80 Fixes and tweaks:
  81 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
  82 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
  83 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
  84 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
  85 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
  86 * Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
  87 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
  88 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
  89 * Various exciting new profiling options.
  90 * Debug log is off by default.
  91 * Various small bugs fixed.
  92
  93 Internal changes:
  94 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
  95   is not actually used so far.
  96 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
  97   but disabled.
  98 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
  99
 100 New translations:
 101 * fi - Finnish
 102 * ia - Interlingua
 103 * no - Norwegian
 104 * sk - Slovak
 105 * ta - Tamil
 106
 107 === Database changes ===
 108
 109 "linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
 110 run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.
 111
 112 Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:
 113
 114 == mediawiki-20031118 ==
 115
 116 * Image deletion fixed.
 117 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
 118   (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 119 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 120 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.
 121
 122 == mediawiki-20031117 ==
 123
 124 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 125 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 126 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
 127   to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
 128   password cookies.
 129 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 130 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 131 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 132 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 133 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 134 * Updates to some translations.
 135 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 136 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 137 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 138 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
 139   added compatibility functions that might or might not help
 140
 141 No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.
 142
 143
 144 == mediawiki-20031107 ==
 145
 146 * Fixed various bugs!
 147 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 148 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 149 * New translations (see below)
 150 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 151 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
 152   the db is locked or the page is protected.
 153 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 154 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 155 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)
 156
 157
 158 === Security note ===
 159
 160 Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
 161 you can reenable uploads by putting:
 162
 163   $wgDisableUploads = false;
 164
 165 into LocalSettings.php.
 166
 167 Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
 168 in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
 169 user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.
 170
 171 As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
 172 You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
 173 stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:
 174
 175   <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
 176      # Ignore .htaccess files
 177      AllowOverride None
 178
 179      # Serve HTML as plaintext
 180      AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
 181
 182      # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
 183      php_admin_flag engine off
 184
 185      # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
 186   </Directory>
 187
 188
 189 === Database updates ===
 190
 191 If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
 192 be made automatically.
 193
 194 To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
 195 following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:
 196
 197   archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
 198   archives/patch-interwiki.sql
 199   archives/patch-indexes.sql
 200   interwiki.sql
 201
 202 To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:
 203
 204   wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 205
 206
 207 === Translations ===
 208
 209 New interface localization files are included for:
 210   fy Frisian
 211   ro Romanian
 212   sl Slovene
 213   sq Albanian
 214   sr Serbian
 215
 216
 217 === Memcached ===
 218
 219 Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
 220 MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
 221 to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
 222 talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
 223 UTF-8 conversion tables.
 224
 225 MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
 226 Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
 227 minimal overhead.
 228
 229 To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
 230 in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.
 231
 232 Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
 233 local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
 234 sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
 235 other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)
 236
 237 To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
 238 appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
 239 volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
 240 when this option is turned on.
 241
 242
 243 === Online documentation ===
 244
 245 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 246 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 247 License:
 248
 249   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
 250
 251
 252 === Mailing list ===
 253
 254 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 255 wikitech-l list:
 256
 257   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 258
 259
 260 === UseModWiki import script ===
 261
 262 A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
 263 subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
 264 does function for the brave and pure of heart.
 265
 266
 267 === Test suite removed ===
 268
 269 The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
 270 release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.
 271
 272
 273 == mediawiki-20030829 ==
 274
 275 First release under MediaWiki name.