RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 == Version 1.3.0beta2, 2004-06-05 ==
   4
   5 **** THIS IS A BETA AND MAY STUNT YOUR GROWTH OR KILL YOUR PETS ****
   6
   7 Look & layout:
   8 * New default layout 'MonoBook'
   9 * Print stylesheet now built-in to every page
  10 * More or less correct XHTML 1.0 (served as text/html by default)
  11
  12 Wiki features:
  13 * Image captions can now include links and other basic formatting
  14 * Image bounding box can be specified instead of width, e.g. as
  15   100x100px, making the image not wider than 100px and not higher
  16   than 100px, keeping aspect ratio.
  17 * Templates have been expanded with parameters, and separated from
  18   the MediaWiki: localization scheme.
  19 * Categories more or less work
  20
  21 Editing:
  22 * Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere
  23 * Edit summaries can now include basic formatting and links
  24
  25 Metadata and output:
  26 * Linked Creative Commons copyright metadata (optional)
  27 * RSS 2.0 feeds for Recent Changes, New Pages
  28
  29 Optional modules:
  30 * WikiHiero hieroglyphic module can be added (separate download)
  31 * Timeline module can be added (separate download).
  32   Requires ploticus.
  33 * TeX now has an experimental MathML output mode (incomplete)
  34
  35 Installation and upgrading:
  36 * The old install.php and update.php have been removed. In-place
  37   installation introduced in 1.2 is now the standard installation
  38   and upgrade method, see INSTALL for directions.
  39
  40 Database:
  41 * The links table has been changed to use a cur_id for l_from.
  42   The link tables must be converted on upgrade, which may entail
  43   some downtime.
  44
  45 Code and compatibility:
  46 * Should now run clean with error reporting set to E_ALL.
  47 * register_globals hack from 1.2 has been replaced with safer code
  48 * Bundled PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
  49   (with some patches)
  50 * Most image-related code moved to Image.php
  51 * More fixes for PHP 4.1.2 (thanks to Asheesh Laroia)
  52 * URL encoding fix for anchors
  53
  54 === Caveats ===
  55
  56 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
  57 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
  58 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
  59 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
  60 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
  61
  62
  63 == Version 1.2.6, 2004-05-24 ==
  64 * Spam blocker ($wgSpamRegex - refuses to save edits that match)
  65 * Updated documentation about $wgWhitelistRead
  66 * Ensure that searchindex table is created as MyISAM
  67 * Interwiki cache timeout (memcached)
  68 * Fix uploads on Windows with magic_quotes_gpc
  69 * Some config fixes for Windows (slashes etc)
  70 * Local interwiki URL redirects
  71 * Fixed obscure deletion problem in squid mode on corrupt entries
  72 * Language files updated to remove more hard-coded "Wikipedia" strings
  73
  74 == Version 1.2.5, 2004-05-01 ==
  75 * Fixed install problem with blank root password
  76 * Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
  77 * Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
  78 * Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
  79 * Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
  80 * IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
  81 * Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack
  82
  83 == Version 1.2.4, 2004-04-13 ==
  84
  85 * Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
  86 * Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
  87 * Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
  88 * Backported optional open proxy blocker
  89 * Backported $wgWhitelistRead
  90 * $wgCapitalLinks option to force full case sensitivity in titles
  91 * Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
  92 * Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the "die()" call to use)
  93
  94 == Version 1.2.3, 2004-04-02 ==
  95
  96 * Fixed an in-place install bug with non-root MySQL user
  97 * Fixed history diff checkboxes bug on titles with ampersands
  98 * Fixed printable link bug on special pages with parameters
  99 * Fixed bug that broke IP blocking w/o memcached
 100 * Turns off E_NOTICE warnings if PHP settings have them on
 101   (you can grope in and turn this off if you like to debug)
 102
 103 == Version 1.2.2, 2004-03-28 ==
 104
 105 * Fixed an upgrade bug introduced in 1.2.1.
 106 * Disabled $wgUseCategoryMagic, which feature is incomplete broken
 107
 108 == Version 1.2.1, 2004-03-27 ==
 109
 110 Installation, compatibility, security fixlets:
 111 * Detect use of PHP as CGI and disable index.php/Title URLs
 112 * Try to auto-create math tmp & output directories if not present
 113 * Disable Asksql in default install ($wgAllowSysopQueries)
 114 * Better handling of get_magic_quotes_gpc (apostrophe problems)
 115 * French localisation no longer hard-codes "Wikipedia" name
 116
 117 == Version 1.2.0 ==
 118
 119 New features in 1.2:
 120 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
 121 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
 122 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
 123 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
 124   may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
 125   (The exact details of this may change in the future)
 126 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
 127 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
 128 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
 129 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
 130 * Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies
 131   (off by default in user preferences)
 132 * Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
 133 * It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki.
 134   An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat"
 135   privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install.
 136
 137 Fixes and tweaks:
 138 * Now works with register_globals off!
 139 * Works with short tags disabled.
 140 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
 141   $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
 142   for a slight rendering speed boost.
 143 * rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or
 144   overwrite everything.
 145 * Various bug fixes.
 146 * Other stuff we forgot.
 147 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!
 148
 149 === Behavior changes ===
 150
 151 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php
 152   The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't
 153   conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
 154 * Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in
 155   DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
 156 * Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can
 157   be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you
 158   don't want the performance hit.
 159
 160 === Database changes ===
 161
 162 An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
 163 (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).
 164
 165 Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
 166 (patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).
 167
 168
 169 == Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==
 170
 171 This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
 172 to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
 173 release.
 174
 175 New features in 1.1:
 176 * New wiki table syntax:
 177   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
 178 * User-editable interface messages:
 179   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
 180 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
 181   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
 182   (There is not yet an import function!)
 183 * "Magic words"
 184
 185 Fixes and tweaks:
 186 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
 187 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
 188 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
 189 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
 190 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
 191 * Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
 192 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
 193 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
 194 * Various exciting new profiling options.
 195 * Debug log is off by default.
 196 * Various small bugs fixed.
 197
 198 Internal changes:
 199 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
 200   is not actually used so far.
 201 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
 202   but disabled.
 203 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
 204
 205 New translations:
 206 * fi - Finnish
 207 * ia - Interlingua
 208 * no - Norwegian
 209 * sk - Slovak
 210 * ta - Tamil
 211
 212 === Database changes ===
 213
 214 "linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
 215 run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.
 216
 217 Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:
 218
 219 == mediawiki-20031118 ==
 220
 221 * Image deletion fixed.
 222 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
 223   (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 224 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 225 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.
 226
 227 == mediawiki-20031117 ==
 228
 229 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 230 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 231 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
 232   to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
 233   password cookies.
 234 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 235 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 236 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 237 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 238 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 239 * Updates to some translations.
 240 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 241 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 242 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 243 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
 244   added compatibility functions that might or might not help
 245
 246 No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.
 247
 248
 249 == mediawiki-20031107 ==
 250
 251 * Fixed various bugs!
 252 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 253 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 254 * New translations (see below)
 255 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 256 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
 257   the db is locked or the page is protected.
 258 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 259 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 260 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)
 261
 262
 263 === Security note ===
 264
 265 Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
 266 you can reenable uploads by putting:
 267
 268   $wgDisableUploads = false;
 269
 270 into LocalSettings.php.
 271
 272 Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
 273 in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
 274 user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.
 275
 276 As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
 277 You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
 278 stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:
 279
 280   <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
 281      # Ignore .htaccess files
 282      AllowOverride None
 283
 284      # Serve HTML as plaintext
 285      AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
 286
 287      # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
 288      php_admin_flag engine off
 289
 290      # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
 291   </Directory>
 292
 293
 294 === Database updates ===
 295
 296 If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
 297 be made automatically.
 298
 299 To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
 300 following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:
 301
 302   archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
 303   archives/patch-interwiki.sql
 304   archives/patch-indexes.sql
 305   interwiki.sql
 306
 307 To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:
 308
 309   wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 310
 311
 312 === Translations ===
 313
 314 New interface localization files are included for:
 315   fy Frisian
 316   ro Romanian
 317   sl Slovene
 318   sq Albanian
 319   sr Serbian
 320
 321
 322 === Memcached ===
 323
 324 Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
 325 MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
 326 to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
 327 talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
 328 UTF-8 conversion tables.
 329
 330 MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
 331 Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
 332 minimal overhead.
 333
 334 To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
 335 in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.
 336
 337 Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
 338 local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
 339 sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
 340 other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)
 341
 342 To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
 343 appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
 344 volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
 345 when this option is turned on.
 346
 347
 348 === Online documentation ===
 349
 350 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 351 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 352 License:
 353
 354   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
 355
 356
 357 === Mailing list ===
 358
 359 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 360 wikitech-l list:
 361
 362   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 363
 364
 365 === UseModWiki import script ===
 366
 367 A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
 368 subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
 369 does function for the brave and pure of heart.
 370
 371
 372 === Test suite removed ===
 373
 374 The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
 375 release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.
 376
 377
 378 == mediawiki-20030829 ==
 379
 380 First release under MediaWiki name.