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  40 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!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