RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 == Version 1.2.0rc1, 2004-02-27 ==
   4
   5 This is a RELEASE CANDIDATE for the new production release. It is more or
   6 less in sync with what is running on Wikipedia right now. There may be
   7 some interesting bugs, it may eat all your data, and documentation may
   8 not be up to date. If you use this on a production site, BE CAREFUL.
   9
  10 New features in 1.2:
  11 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
  12 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
  13 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
  14 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
  15   may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
  16   (The exact details of this may change in the future)
  17 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
  18 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
  19 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
  20 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
  21 * JavaScript editing toolbar (off by default in user preferences)
  22
  23 Fixes and tweaks:
  24 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
  25   $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
  26   for a slight rendering speed boost.
  27 * Various bug fixes.
  28 * Other stuff we forgot.
  29 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!
  30
  31 === IMPORTANT BEHAVIOR CHANGES: ===
  32
  33 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now installed as index.php and redirect.php
  34   by default. If you are upgrading from an older version, you will have to
  35   change $wgScript in LocalSettings.php to point to index.php and
  36   redirect.php.
  37
  38 === Database changes ===
  39
  40 An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
  41 (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).
  42
  43 Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
  44 (patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).
  45
  46
  47 == Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==
  48
  49 This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
  50 to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
  51 release.
  52
  53 New features in 1.1:
  54 * New wiki table syntax:
  55   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
  56 * User-editable interface messages:
  57   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
  58 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
  59   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
  60   (There is not yet an import function!)
  61 * "Magic words"
  62
  63 Fixes and tweaks:
  64 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
  65 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
  66 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
  67 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
  68 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
  69 * Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
  70 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
  71 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
  72 * Various exciting new profiling options.
  73 * Debug log is off by default.
  74 * Various small bugs fixed.
  75
  76 Internal changes:
  77 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
  78   is not actually used so far.
  79 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
  80   but disabled.
  81 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
  82
  83 New translations:
  84 * fi - Finnish
  85 * ia - Interlingua
  86 * no - Norwegian
  87 * sk - Slovak
  88 * ta - Tamil
  89
  90 === Database changes ===
  91
  92 "linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
  93 run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.
  94
  95 Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:
  96
  97 == mediawiki-20031118 ==
  98
  99 * Image deletion fixed.
 100 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
 101   (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 102 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 103 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.
 104
 105 == mediawiki-20031117 ==
 106
 107 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 108 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 109 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
 110   to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
 111   password cookies.
 112 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 113 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 114 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 115 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 116 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 117 * Updates to some translations.
 118 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 119 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 120 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 121 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
 122   added compatibility functions that might or might not help
 123
 124 No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.
 125
 126
 127 == mediawiki-20031107 ==
 128
 129 * Fixed various bugs!
 130 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 131 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 132 * New translations (see below)
 133 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 134 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
 135   the db is locked or the page is protected.
 136 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 137 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 138 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)
 139
 140
 141 === Security note ===
 142
 143 Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
 144 you can reenable uploads by putting:
 145
 146   $wgDisableUploads = false;
 147
 148 into LocalSettings.php.
 149
 150 Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
 151 in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
 152 user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.
 153
 154 As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
 155 You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
 156 stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:
 157
 158   <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
 159      # Ignore .htaccess files
 160      AllowOverride None
 161
 162      # Serve HTML as plaintext
 163      AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
 164
 165      # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
 166      php_admin_flag engine off
 167
 168      # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
 169   </Directory>
 170
 171
 172 === Database updates ===
 173
 174 If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
 175 be made automatically.
 176
 177 To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
 178 following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:
 179
 180   archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
 181   archives/patch-interwiki.sql
 182   archives/patch-indexes.sql
 183   interwiki.sql
 184
 185 To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:
 186
 187   wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 188
 189
 190 === Translations ===
 191
 192 New interface localization files are included for:
 193   fy Frisian
 194   ro Romanian
 195   sl Slovene
 196   sq Albanian
 197   sr Serbian
 198
 199
 200 === Memcached ===
 201
 202 Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
 203 MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
 204 to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
 205 talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
 206 UTF-8 conversion tables.
 207
 208 MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
 209 Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
 210 minimal overhead.
 211
 212 To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
 213 in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.
 214
 215 Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
 216 local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
 217 sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
 218 other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)
 219
 220 To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
 221 appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
 222 volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
 223 when this option is turned on.
 224
 225
 226 === Online documentation ===
 227
 228 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 229 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 230 License:
 231
 232   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
 233
 234
 235 === Mailing list ===
 236
 237 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 238 wikitech-l list:
 239
 240   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 241
 242
 243 === UseModWiki import script ===
 244
 245 A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
 246 subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
 247 does function for the brave and pure of heart.
 248
 249
 250 === Test suite removed ===
 251
 252 The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
 253 release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.
 254
 255
 256 == mediawiki-20030829 ==
 257
 258 First release under MediaWiki name.