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
  44 === New features in 1.14 ===
  45
  46 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  47   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  48   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  49 * Configurable er-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  50   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  51   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  52   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  53 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  54   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  55 * Handheld stylesheet options
  56 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  57   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  58   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  59   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  60   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  61 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  62   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  63 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  64   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  65 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  66   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  67 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  68   Special:ListGroupRights
  69 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  70 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  71   the main page to be customized
  72 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  73   the wiki
  74 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  75   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  76   being converted or not
  77 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  78   Patch by Emufarmers
  79 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  80 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  81   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  82   templates to work with that hook.
  83 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  84   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  85 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  86 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  87   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  88 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  89   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  90 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  91   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  92 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  93   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  94 * HTML entities like &nbsp; now work (are not escaped) in edit summaries.
  95 * (bug 13815) In the comment for page moves, use the colon-separator message
  96   instead of a hardcoded colon.
  97
  98 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
  99
 100 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
 101 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
 102   falls back to the user option
 103 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 104 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 105 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 106 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 107 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 108 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 109 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 110 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 111 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 112   no longer redirect to the second link
 113 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 114   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 115   Patch by Max Semenik.
 116 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 117   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 118 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 119   minutes.
 120 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 121   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 122 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 123   entirely, not just the display of it.
 124 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 125   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 126 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 127   ns-special to special pages.
 128 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 129 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 130   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 131   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 132 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 133   again
 134 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 135 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 136   gives results
 137 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 138   contain '/*' in the title
 139 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 140 * $wgSpamRegex now matches the edit summary and page move descriptions in
 141   addition to body text.
 142 * The "image" tab on the Monobook skin now appears blue for images available
 143   from a shared repository
 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 * (bug 15228) Combining revids= and redirects now throws a warning instead of an
 166   error, and still resolves redirects generated by the generator.
 167 * list={backlinks,embeddedin,imageusage} now return arrays with keys 0, 1, 2,
 168   etc. (AKA lists) instead of arrays with pageIDs as keys (AKA hash tables)
 169   for consistency with other list modules.
 170
 171 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 172
 173 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 174 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 175
 176 (no changes yet)
 177
 178 == Compatibility ==
 179
 180 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 181
 182 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 183 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 184 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 185
 186 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 187 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 188
 189
 190 == Upgrading ==
 191
 192 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 193 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 194 database schema changes.
 195
 196 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 197 new database fields are filled with data.
 198
 199 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 200 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 201 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 202
 203 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 204
 205
 206 === Caveats ===
 207
 208 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 209 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 210 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 211 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 212 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 213
 214 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 215
 216
 217 === Online documentation ===
 218
 219 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 220 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 221 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 222 the public domain) :
 223
 224   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 225
 226
 227 === Mailing list ===
 228
 229 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 230 wikitech-l list:
 231
 232   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 233
 234 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 235
 236   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 237
 238 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 239 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 240
 241
 242 === IRC help ===
 243
 244 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net