RELEASE-NOTES-1.26

   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 1.26 ==
   5
   6 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
   7
   8 MediaWiki 1.26 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in
   9 production.
  10
  11 === Configuration changes in 1.26 ===
  12 * $wgPasswordResetRoutes['email'] = true by default.
  13 * $wgEnableParserCache was deprecated, set $wgParserCacheType to CACHE_NONE
  14   instead if you want to disable the parser cache.
  15 * New-style continuation is now the default for API action=continue. Clients may
  16   use the 'rawcontinue' parameter to receive raw query-continue data, but the
  17   new style is encouraged as it's harder to implement incorrectly.
  18 * Deprecated API formats dump and wddx have been completely removed.
  19 * (T7645) The "Signature" button on the edit toolbar is now hidden by default
  20   in non-talk namespaces. A new configuration variable,
  21   $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, controls in which subject (non-talk) namespaces
  22   the "Signature" button on the edit toolbar will be displayed.
  23 * $wgResourceLoaderUseESI was deprecated and removed. This was an experimental
  24   feature that was never enabled by default.
  25 * $wgResourceLoaderExperimentalAsyncLoading was deprecated and removed.
  26   This experimental feature was never enabled by default and is obsolete as of
  27   MediaWiki 1.26, in where ResourceLoader became fully asynchronous.
  28 * $wgMasterWaitTimeout was removed (deprecated in 1.24).
  29 * Fields in ParserOptions are now private. Use the accessors instead.
  30 * Custom LESS functions (defined via $wgResourceLoaderLESSFunctions)
  31   have been removed, after being deprecated in 1.24.
  32 * $wgAlwaysUseTidy has been removed.
  33 * ResetSessionID hook has been removed. Nothing seems to use it.
  34 * Certain AuthPlugin methods are deprecated in favor of new hooks:
  35 ** AuthPlugin::initUser() is replaced by LocalUserCreated.
  36 ** AuthPlugin::updateUser() is replaced by UserLoggedIn.
  37 ** AuthPlugin::updateExternalDB() is replaced by the existing UserSaveSettings.
  38 ** AuthPlugin::updateExternalDBGroups() is replaced by UserGroupsChanged.
  39 ** AuthPluginUser::isHidden() is replaced by UserIsHidden.
  40 ** AuthPluginUser::isLocked() is replaced by UserIsLocked.
  41 * The UserRights hook is deprecated in favor of the new UserGroupsChanged hook.
  42 * AuthPlugin::initUser() and AuthPlugin::updateUser() should no longer replace
  43   the passed User object.
  44 * $wgBlockAllowsUTEdit is now set to true by default. This allows
  45   blocked users to edit their talk pages unless explicitly disabled
  46   when they are being blocked.
  47 * CLDRPluralRule* classes have been replaced with wikimedia/cldr-plural-rule-parser.
  48
  49 === New features in 1.26 ===
  50 * (T51506) Now action=info gives estimates of actual watchers for a page.
  51   See $wgRCMaxAge, $wgWatchersMaxAge and $wgUnwatchedPageSecret
  52   to learn how to configure if needed.
  53 * Change tags can now be hidden in the interface by disabling the associated
  54   "tag-<id>" interface message.
  55 * ':' (colon) is now invalid in usernames for new accounts. Existing accounts
  56   are not affected.
  57 * Added a new hook, 'LogException', to log exceptions in nonstandard ways.
  58 * Revive the 'SpecialSearchResultsAppend' hook which occurs after the list of
  59   search results are rendered. The initial use case is to append a "give us
  60   feedback" link beneath the search results.
  61 * Added a new hook, 'RejectParserCacheValue', which allows extensions to
  62   reject an otherwise-successful parser cache lookup. The intent is to allow
  63   extensions to manage the eviction of archaic HTML output from the cache.
  64 * (T68699) The expiration of the UserID and Token login cookies
  65   ($wgExtendedLoginCookieExpiration) can be configured independently of the
  66   expiration of all other cookies ($wgCookieExpiration).
  67 * (T50519) Support for generating JPEG/PNG thumbnails from WebP images added
  68   if ImageMagick is used as image scaler ($wgUseImageMagick = true). Uploading
  69   of WebP images still disabled by default. Add $wgFileExtensions[] =
  70   'webp'; to LocalSettings.php to enable uploading of WebP images.
  71 * Added new hooks 'EnhancedChangesListModifyLineData' &
  72   'EnhancedChangesListModifyBlockLineData', to modify the data used to build
  73   lines in enhanced recentchanges and watchlist.
  74 * Caches that need purging ability now use the WANObjectCache interface.
  75   This corresponds to a new $wgMainWANCache setting, which defaults to using
  76   the $wgMainCacheType settings.
  77 * Added MWTimestamp::getTimezoneString() which returns the localized timezone
  78   string, if available. To localize this string, see the comments of
  79   $wgLocaltimezone in includes/DefaultSettings.php.
  80 * Callers needing fast light-weight data stores use $wgMainStash to select
  81   the store type from $wgObjectCaches. The default is the local database.
  82 * Interface message overrides in the MediaWiki namespace will now be cached in
  83   memcached and APC (if available), rather than memcached and local files.
  84 * Added a new hook, 'RandomPageQuery', to allow modification of the query used
  85   by Special:Random to select random pages.
  86 * $wgTransactionalTimeLimit was added, which controls the request time limit
  87   for potentially slow POST requests that need to be as atomic as possible.
  88 * ResourceLoader now loads all scripts asynchronously. The top-queue and
  89   startup modules are no longer synchronously loaded.
  90 * 'mediawiki.ui.button' styles are no longer unconditionally loaded on every
  91   page. During the deprecation period, the styles will only be loaded on pages
  92   which contain 'mw-ui-button' in their HTML. Starting in 1.28, the styles will
  93   only be loaded if explicitly required.
  94 * If search returns zero results and current search engine has a "did you mean"
  95   suggestion, results for suggestion will be shown. Can be disabled by setting
  96   $wgSearchRunSuggestedQuery to false.
  97
  98 == External libraries ==
  99 === Upgraded external libraries ===
 100 * Updated es5-shim from v4.0.0 to v4.1.5.
 101 * Updated json2 from revision 2014-02-04 to 2015-05-03.
 102 * Updated Sinon.JS from 1.10.3 to 1.15.4.
 103 * Updated jQuery Client from v1.0.0 to v2.0.0.
 104 * Updated QUnit from v1.17.1 to v1.18.0.
 105 * Updated liuggio/statsd-php-client from v1.0.12 to v1.0.16
 106 * Updated oojs/oojs-ui from v0.9.8 to v0.12.9.
 107 * Updated wikimedia/utfnormal from v1.0.2 to v1.0.3
 108 * Updated wikimedia/composer-merge-plugin from v1.0.0 to v1.2.1.
 109 * Updated zordius/lightncandy from v0.18 to v0.21.
 110
 111 === New external libraries ===
 112 * Added composer/semver v0.1.0.
 113 * Added mediawiki/at-ease v1.1.0.
 114 * Added wikimedia/assert v0.2.2.
 115 * Added wikimedia/cldr-plural-rule-parser v1.0.0
 116 * Added wikimedia/ip-set v1.0.1.
 117 * Added wikimedia/wrappedstring v2.0.0.
 118
 119 === Removed and replaced external libraries ===
 120 * Replaced leafo/lessphp v0.5.0 with oyejorge/less.php: v1.7.0.8
 121
 122 === Bug fixes in 1.26 ===
 123 * (T53283) load.php sometimes sends 304 response without full headers
 124 * (T65198) Talk page tabs now have a "rel=discussion" attribute
 125 * (T98841) {{msgnw:}} now preserves comments even when subst: is not used.
 126 * (T104142) $wgEmergencyContact and $wgPasswordSender now use their default
 127   value if set to an empty string.
 128
 129 === Action API changes in 1.26 ===
 130 * New-style continuation is now the default for action=continue. Clients may
 131   use the 'rawcontinue' parameter to receive raw query-continue data, but the
 132   new style is encouraged as it's harder to implement incorrectly.
 133 * Deprecated API formats dump and wddx have been completely removed.
 134 * API action=query&list=tags: The displayname can now be boolean false if the
 135   tag is meant to be hidden from user interfaces.
 136 * action=import no longer allows both the namespace= and rootpage= parameters
 137   to be set. If they are both set, the value of rootpage= will be ignored.
 138 * prop=revision output in enum mode is now sorted by timestamp rather than
 139   revision ID. This usually won't make any difference.
 140 * (T102645) Namespace list from meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespaces is now an array
 141   with formatversion=2.
 142 * Various other output from meta=siteinfo will now always be arrays instead of
 143   sometimes being numerically-indexed objects with formatversion=2.
 144 * When errors about users being blocked are returned, they now include
 145   information about the relevant block.
 146 * (T99926) list=random has higher limits, in line with other API modules.
 147 * list=random's rnredirect parameter is deprecated in favor of a new
 148   rnfilterredir parameter that also allows for listing both redirects and
 149   non-redirects.
 150 * list=random now supports continuation.
 151 * API responses to GET requests may now include ETag and Last-Modified headers,
 152   and will honor corresponding If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since on such
 153   requests.
 154 * (T47988) The protect log event details now use new-style formatting.
 155
 156 === Action API internal changes in 1.26 ===
 157 * New metadata item ApiResult::META_KVP_MERGE to allow for merging the KVP key
 158   into the value when the value is an assoc.
 159 * API action modules may now provide values for the RFC 7232 ETag and
 160   Last-Modified headers. The API will check these against If-None-Match and
 161   If-Modified-Since request headers on GET requests and avoid executing the
 162   module when appropriate.
 163
 164 === Languages updated in 1.26 ===
 165
 166 MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated
 167 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 168 changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.
 169
 170 * Languages added:
 171 ** ase (American sign language), thanks to translator Icemandeaf
 172 ** dty (डोटेली/Doteli), thanks to translators जनक राज भट्ट, बिप्लब आनन्द,
 173    मेश सिंह बोहरा, and राम प्रसाद जोशी
 174 ** luz (لئری دوٙمینی / Southern Luri)
 175 ** olo (Livvinкarjala / Livvi-Karelian), thanks to translators Denö, Hiloin Natoi,
 176    Ilja.mos, and Mashoi7
 177
 178 === Other changes in 1.26 ===
 179 * ChangeTags::tagDescription() will return false if the interface message
 180   for the tag is disabled.
 181 * Added PageHistoryPager::doBatchLookups hook.
 182 * Added $wikiId parameter to FormatAutocomments hook.
 183 * Added ParserCacheSaveComplete to ParserCache
 184 * supportsDirectEditing and supportsDirectApiEditing methods added to
 185   ContentHandler, to provide a way for ApiEditPage and EditPage to check
 186   if direct editing of content is allowed. These methods return false,
 187   by default for the ContentHandler base class and true for TextContentHandler
 188   and it's derivative classes (everything in core). For Content types that
 189   do not support direct editing, an alternative mechanism should be provided
 190   for editing, such as action overrides or specific api modules.
 191 * mediaWiki.confirmCloseWindow now returns an object of functions, instead of
 192   one function. The callback can't be called directly any more. The callback
 193   function is replaced with confirmCloseWindow.release().
 194 * BREAKING CHANGE: Added an optional ResouceLoaderContext parameter to
 195   ResourceLoaderModule::getDependencies(). Extension classes that override that
 196   method should be updated. If they aren't updated, PHP Strict standards
 197   warnings will appear when E_STRICT error reporting is enabled. Note: in the
 198   near future, this parameter will probably become non-optional.
 199 * Removed maintenance script deleteImageMemcached.php.
 200 * MWFunction::newObj() was removed (deprecated in 1.25).
 201   ObjectFactory::getObjectFromSpec() should be used instead.
 202 * The parser will no longer randomize the string it uses to mark the place of
 203   items that were stripped during parsing. It will use a fixed string instead.
 204   This causes the parser to re-use the regular expressions it uses to search
 205   and replace markers rather than generate novel expressions on each parse.
 206   Re-using regular expressions will improve performance on HHVM and the
 207   forthcoming PHP 7. The interfaces changes accompanying this change are:
 208   - Parser::getRandomString() and Parser::uniqPrefix() have been deprecated.
 209   - The $uniq_prefix argument for Parser::extractTagsAndParams() and the
 210     $prefix argument for StripState::_construct() are deprecated and their
 211     value is ignored.
 212 * wfSuppressWarnings() and wfRestoreWarnings() were split into a separate library,
 213   mediawiki/at-ease, and are now deprecated. Callers should use
 214   MediaWiki\suppressWarnings() and MediaWiki\restoreWarnings() directly.
 215 * The Block class constructor now takes an associative array of parameters
 216   instead of many optional positional arguments. Calling the constructor the old
 217   way will issue a deprecation warning.
 218 * The jquery.mwExtension module was deprecated.
 219 * $wgSpecialPageGroups was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 220 * SpecialPageFactory::setGroup was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 221 * SpecialPageFactory::getGroup was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 222 * DatabaseBase::ignoreErrors() is now protected.
 223 * BREAKING CHANGE: mediawiki.legacy.ajax has been removed, following
 224   a lengthy deprecation period.
 225 * The ScopedPHPTimeout class was removed.
 226 * Removed maintenance script fixSlaveDesync.php.
 227 * Watchlist tokens, SpecialResetTokens, and User::getTokenFromOption()
 228   are deprecated. Applications using those can work via the OAuth
 229   extension instead. New tokens types should not be added.
 230 * (T36948) The default file revert message's timestamp is now in $wgLocaltimezone,
 231   instead of UTC.
 232 * DatabaseBase::errorCount() was removed (unused).
 233 * $wgDeferredUpdateList was removed.
 234 * DeferredUpdates::addHTMLCacheUpdate() was removed.
 235 * The default name of the 'suppress' group page has been changed from
 236   'Project:Oversight' to 'Project:Suppress'.
 237 * (T84937) Free external links ("autolinked" urls) will now be terminated
 238   by &nbsp; and HTML entity encodings of &nbsp, <, and >.
 239 * DatabaseBase::resultObject() is now protected (use outside Database classes
 240   not necessary since 1.11).
 241 * Calling ResourceLoaderFileModule::readStyleFiles() without a
 242   ResourceLoaderContext instance is deprecated.
 243 * ResourceLoader::getLessCompiler() now takes an optional parameter of
 244   additional LESS variables to set for the compiler.
 245
 246 == Compatibility ==
 247
 248 MediaWiki 1.26 requires PHP 5.3.3 or later. There is experimental support for
 249 HHVM 3.3.0.
 250
 251 MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but
 252 support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for
 253 Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.
 254
 255 The supported versions are:
 256
 257 * MySQL 5.0.3 or later
 258 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
 259 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
 260 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 261 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)
 262
 263 == Upgrading ==
 264
 265 1.26 has several database changes since 1.25, and will not work without schema
 266 updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision
 267 table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site,
 268 many hours on a large site).
 269
 270 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons
 271 repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise
 272 due to database schema changes.
 273
 274 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 275 new database fields are filled with data.
 276
 277 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to
 278 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed
 279 with MediaWiki 1.21.
 280
 281 Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 282
 283 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 284
 285 For notes on 1.25.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 286
 287 == Online documentation ==
 288
 289 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on
 290 MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except
 291 for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
 292
 293         https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 294
 295 == Mailing list ==
 296
 297 A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
 298
 299         https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 300
 301 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 302
 303         https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 304
 305 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 306 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 307
 308 == IRC help ==
 309
 310 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.