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
  23 * $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl is an array of namespaces to be exempt from
  24   the effect of the new __INDEX__/__NOINDEX__ magic words.  (Default: null, ex-
  25   empt all content namespaces.)
  26 * $wgForwardSearchUrl has been removed entirely. Documented setting since 1.4
  27   has been $wgSearchForwardUrl.
  28 * (bug 15080) $wgOverrideSiteFeed has been added. Setting either
  29   $wgSiteFeed['rss'] or 'atom' to a URL will override the default Recent Changes
  30   feed that appears on all pages.
  31 * $wgSQLiteDataDirMode has been introduced as the default directory mode for
  32   SQLite data directories on creation. Note this setting is separate from
  33   $wgDirectoryMode, which applies to all normal directories created by MediaWiki.
  34 * $wgGroupsAddToSelf and $wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf now work more like
  35   $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups, where the user must belong to a specified
  36   group in order to add or remove those groups from themselves.
  37   Backwards compatibility is maintained.
  38 * $wgRestrictDisplayTitle controls if the use of the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic
  39   word is restricted to titles equivalent to the actual page title. This
  40   is true per default, but can be set to false to allow any title.
  41 * $wgSpamRegex may now be an array of multiple regular expressions.
  42 * $wgAjaxSearch has been removed; use $wgEnableMWSuggest instead.
  43 * Editing the MediaWiki namespace is now unconditionally restricted to people
  44   with the editinterface right, configuring this in $wgNamespaceProtection
  45   is not required.
  46
  47 === New features in 1.14 ===
  48
  49 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  50   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  51   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  52 * Configurable per-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  53   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  54   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  55   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  56 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  57   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  58 * Handheld stylesheet options
  59 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  60   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  61   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  62   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  63   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  64 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  65   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  66 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  67   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  68 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  69   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  70 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  71   Special:ListGroupRights
  72 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  73 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  74   the main page to be customized
  75 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  76   the wiki
  77 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  78   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  79   being converted or not
  80 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  81   Patch by Emufarmers
  82 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  83 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  84   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  85   templates to work with that hook.
  86 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  87   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  88 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  89 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  90   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  91 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  92   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  93 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  94   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  95 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  96   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  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 * Allow <gallery> to accept image names without an Image: prefix
 101 * Add tooltips to rollback and undo links
 102 * Backend upload code has been removed from SpecialUpload.php. This may cause
 103   backwards incompatibility with upload extensions.
 104 * BMP images are now displayed as PNG
 105 * (bug 13471) Added NUMBERINGROUP magic word
 106 * (bug 11884) Now support Flash EXIF attribute
 107 * Show thumbnails in the file history list, patch by User:Agbad
 108 * Added support of piped wikilinks using double-width brackets
 109
 110 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
 111
 112 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
 113 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
 114   falls back to the user option
 115 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 116 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 117 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 118 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 119 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 120 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 121 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 122 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 123 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 124   no longer redirect to the second link
 125 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 126   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 127   Patch by Max Semenik.
 128 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 129   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 130 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 131   minutes.
 132 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 133   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 134 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 135   entirely, not just the display of it.
 136 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 137   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 138 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 139   ns-special to special pages.
 140 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 141 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 142   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 143   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 144 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 145   again
 146 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 147 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 148   gives results
 149 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 150   contain '/*' in the title
 151 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 152 * $wgSpamRegex now matches the edit summary and page move descriptions in
 153   addition to body text.
 154 * Navigation links to images available from a shared repository (like Commons)
 155   from their local talk pages no longer appear as redlinks
 156 * Action=purge on ForeignApiFiles now works (purges their thumbnails and
 157   description pages).
 158 * (bug 15303) Title conversion for templates wasn't working in some cases.
 159 * (bug 15264) Underscores in Special:Search/Foo_bar parameters were taken
 160   literally; now converting them to spaces per expectation.
 161 * (bug 15342) "Invert" checkbox now works correctly when selecting main
 162   namespace in Special:Watchlist
 163 * (bug 15172) 'Go' button of Special:Recentchanges now on the same line as the
 164   last input element (like Special:Watchlist too)
 165 * (bug 15351) Fix fatal error for invalid section fragments in autocomments
 166 * Fixed intermittent deadlock errors involving objectcache table queries.
 167   Use a separate database connection for the objectcache table to avoid
 168   long-lasting locks on that table.
 169 * Respect file restrictions in the file history list
 170
 171
 172 === API changes in 1.14 ===
 173
 174 * Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now
 175   shown as empty instead of the current time.
 176 * API search now falls back to fulltext search by default when using Lucene
 177   or other engine which doesn't support a separate title search function.
 178   This means you can use API search on Wikipedia without explicitly adding
 179   &srwhat=text to the query.
 180 * Added iiprop=bitdepth to imageinfo and aiprop=bitdepth to allimages
 181 * (bug 14713) API-specific permissions (such as 'writeapi' and 'apihighlimits'
 182   are now listed on action=help
 183 * (bug 15044) Added requestid parameter to api.php to facilitate distinguishing
 184   between requests
 185 * (bug 15048) Added limit field for multivalue parameters to action=paraminfo
 186   output.
 187 * When the limit on multivalue parameters is exceeded, a warning is issued
 188 * list=search doesn't list missing pages any more
 189 * (bug 15178) Added clshow to prop=categories to allow filtering for hidden/
 190   non-hidden categories
 191 * (bug 15228) Combining revids= and redirects now throws a warning instead of an
 192   error, and still resolves redirects generated by the generator.
 193 * list={backlinks,embeddedin,imageusage} now return arrays with keys 0, 1, 2,
 194   etc. (AKA lists) instead of arrays with pageIDs as keys (AKA hash tables)
 195   for consistency with other list modules.
 196 * Added action=watch
 197 * (bug 15275) apprefix and related parameters ignore spaces at the end
 198 * action=edit no longer throws unknown error 228  when trying to create an empty
 199   section with section=new
 200 * Database replication lag doesn't cause all action=edit requests to return the
 201   nochange flag any more
 202 * (bug 15392) ApiFormatBase::formatHTML now uses $wgUrlProtocols.
 203
 204
 205 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 206
 207 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 208 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 209
 210 * Fiji Hindi (Devanagari script) (hif-deva)
 211 * Krio (kri)
 212 * Lezghian (lez)
 213 * Laz (lzz)
 214 * Niuean (niu)
 215 * Oromo (om)
 216 * Plautdietsch (pdt)
 217 * Tarantino (roa-tara)
 218 * Serbo-Croatian (sh)
 219
 220 == Compatibility ==
 221
 222 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 223
 224 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 225 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 226 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 227
 228 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 229 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 230
 231
 232 == Upgrading ==
 233
 234 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 235 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 236 database schema changes.
 237
 238 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 239 new database fields are filled with data.
 240
 241 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 242 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 243 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 244
 245 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 246
 247
 248 === Caveats ===
 249
 250 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 251 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 252 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 253 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 254 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 255
 256 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 257
 258
 259 === Online documentation ===
 260
 261 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 262 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 263 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 264 the public domain) :
 265
 266   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 267
 268
 269 === Mailing list ===
 270
 271 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 272 wikitech-l list:
 273
 274   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 275
 276 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 277
 278   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 279
 280 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 281 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 282
 283
 284 === IRC help ===
 285
 286 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net