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 * $wgEnablePersistentCookies has been added. Setting to false disables the
  39   setting of persistent cookies. Defaults to true.
  40
  41 === New features in 1.14 ===
  42
  43 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  44   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  45   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  46 * Configurable er-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  47   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  48   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  49   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  50 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  51   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  52 * Handheld stylesheet options
  53 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  54   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  55   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  56   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  57   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  58 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  59   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  60 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  61   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  62 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  63   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  64 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  65   Special:ListGroupRights
  66 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  67 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  68   the main page to be customized
  69 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  70   the wiki
  71 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  72   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  73   being converted or not
  74 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  75   Patch by Emufarmers
  76 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  77 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  78   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  79   templates to work with that hook.
  80 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  81   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  82 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  83 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  84   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  85 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  86   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  87 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  88   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  89 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  90   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  91 * (bug 14468) Lines in classic RecentChanges and Watchlist have classes "odd"
  92   and "even" to make colouring using css possible.
  93
  94 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
  95
  96 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
  97 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
  98   falls back to the user option
  99 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 100 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 101 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 102 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 103 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 104 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 105 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 106 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 107 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 108   no longer redirect to the second link
 109 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 110   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 111   Patch by Max Semenik.
 112 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 113   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 114 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 115   minutes.
 116 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 117   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 118 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 119   entirely, not just the display of it.
 120 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 121   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 122 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 123   ns-special to special pages.
 124 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 125 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 126   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 127   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 128 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 129   again
 130 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 131 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 132   gives results
 133 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 134   contain '/*' in the title
 135 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 136
 137 === API changes in 1.14 ===
 138
 139 * Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now
 140   shown as empty instead of the current time.
 141 * API search now falls back to fulltext search by default when using Lucene
 142   or other engine which doesn't support a separate title search function.
 143   This means you can use API search on Wikipedia without explicitly adding
 144   &srwhat=text to the query.
 145 * Added iiprop=bitdepth to imageinfo and aiprop=bitdepth to allimages
 146 * (bug 14713) API-specific permissions (such as 'writeapi' and 'apihighlimits'
 147   are now listed on action=help
 148 * (bug 15044) Added requestid parameter to api.php to facilitate distinguishing
 149   between requests
 150 * (bug 15048) Added limit field for multivalue parameters to action=paraminfo
 151   output.
 152 * When the limit on multivalue parameters is exceeded, a warning is issued
 153 * list=search doesn't list missing pages any more
 154
 155 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 156
 157 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 158 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 159
 160 (no changes yet)
 161
 162 == Compatibility ==
 163
 164 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 165
 166 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 167 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 168 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 169
 170 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 171 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 172
 173
 174 == Upgrading ==
 175
 176 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 177 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 178 database schema changes.
 179
 180 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 181 new database fields are filled with data.
 182
 183 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 184 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 185 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 186
 187 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 188
 189
 190 === Caveats ===
 191
 192 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 193 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 194 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 195 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 196 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 197
 198 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 199
 200
 201 === Online documentation ===
 202
 203 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 204 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 205 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 206 the public domain) :
 207
 208   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 209
 210
 211 === Mailing list ===
 212
 213 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 214 wikitech-l list:
 215
 216   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 217
 218 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 219
 220   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 221
 222 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 223 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 224
 225
 226 === IRC help ===
 227
 228 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net