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 * $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl is an array of namespaces to be exempt from
  23   the effect of the new __INDEX__/__NOINDEX__ magic words.  (Default: null, ex-
  24   empt all content namespaces.)
  25 * $wgForwardSearchUrl has been removed entirely. Documented setting since 1.4
  26   has been $wgSearchForwardUrl.
  27 * (bug 15080) $wgOverrideSiteFeed has been added. Setting either
  28   $wgSiteFeed['rss'] or 'atom' to a URL will override the default Recent Changes
  29   feed that appears on all pages.
  30 * $wgSQLiteDataDirMode has been introduced as the default directory mode for
  31   SQLite data directories on creation. Note this setting is separate from
  32   $wgDirectoryMode, which applies to all normal directories created by MediaWiki.
  33 * $wgGroupsAddToSelf and $wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf now work more like
  34   $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups, where the user must belong to a specified
  35   group in order to add or remove those groups from themselves.
  36   Backwards compatibility is maintained.
  37 * $wgRestrictDisplayTitle controls if the use of the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic
  38   word is restricted to titles equivalent to the actual page title. This
  39   is true per default, but can be set to false to allow any title.
  40 * $wgSpamRegex may now be an array of multiple regular expressions.
  41
  42 === New features in 1.14 ===
  43
  44 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  45   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  46   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  47 * Configurable er-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  48   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  49   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  50   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  51 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  52   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  53 * Handheld stylesheet options
  54 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  55   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  56   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  57   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  58   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  59 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  60   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  61 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  62   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  63 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  64   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  65 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  66   Special:ListGroupRights
  67 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  68 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  69   the main page to be customized
  70 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  71   the wiki
  72 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  73   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  74   being converted or not
  75 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  76   Patch by Emufarmers
  77 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  78 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  79   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  80   templates to work with that hook.
  81 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  82   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  83 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  84 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  85   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  86 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  87   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  88 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  89   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  90 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  91   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  92 * HTML entities like &nbsp; now work (are not escaped) in edit summaries.
  93 * (bug 13815) In the comment for page moves, use the colon-separator message
  94   instead of a hardcoded colon.
  95
  96 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
  97
  98 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
  99 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
 100   falls back to the user option
 101 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 102 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 103 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 104 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 105 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 106 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 107 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 108 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 109 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 110   no longer redirect to the second link
 111 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 112   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 113   Patch by Max Semenik.
 114 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 115   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 116 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 117   minutes.
 118 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 119   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 120 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 121   entirely, not just the display of it.
 122 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 123   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 124 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 125   ns-special to special pages.
 126 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 127 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 128   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 129   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 130 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 131   again
 132 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 133 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 134   gives results
 135 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 136   contain '/*' in the title
 137 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 138 * $wgSpamRegex now matches the edit summary and page move descriptions in
 139   addition to body text.
 140
 141
 142 === API changes in 1.14 ===
 143
 144 * Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now
 145   shown as empty instead of the current time.
 146 * API search now falls back to fulltext search by default when using Lucene
 147   or other engine which doesn't support a separate title search function.
 148   This means you can use API search on Wikipedia without explicitly adding
 149   &srwhat=text to the query.
 150 * Added iiprop=bitdepth to imageinfo and aiprop=bitdepth to allimages
 151 * (bug 14713) API-specific permissions (such as 'writeapi' and 'apihighlimits'
 152   are now listed on action=help
 153 * (bug 15044) Added requestid parameter to api.php to facilitate distinguishing
 154   between requests
 155 * (bug 15048) Added limit field for multivalue parameters to action=paraminfo
 156   output.
 157 * When the limit on multivalue parameters is exceeded, a warning is issued
 158 * list=search doesn't list missing pages any more
 159 * (bug 15178) Added clshow to prop=categories to allow filtering for hidden/
 160   non-hidden categories
 161 * (bug 15228) Combining revids= and redirects now throws a warning instead of an
 162   error, and still resolves redirects generated by the generator.
 163 * list={backlinks,embeddedin,imageusage} now return arrays with keys 0, 1, 2,
 164   etc. (AKA lists) instead of arrays with pageIDs as keys (AKA hash tables)
 165   for consistency with other list modules.
 166
 167 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 168
 169 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 170 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 171
 172 (no changes yet)
 173
 174 == Compatibility ==
 175
 176 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 177
 178 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 179 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 180 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 181
 182 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 183 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 184
 185
 186 == Upgrading ==
 187
 188 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 189 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 190 database schema changes.
 191
 192 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 193 new database fields are filled with data.
 194
 195 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 196 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 197 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 198
 199 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 200
 201
 202 === Caveats ===
 203
 204 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 205 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 206 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 207 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 208 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 209
 210 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 211
 212
 213 === Online documentation ===
 214
 215 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 216 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 217 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 218 the public domain) :
 219
 220   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 221
 222
 223 === Mailing list ===
 224
 225 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 226 wikitech-l list:
 227
 228   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 229
 230 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 231
 232   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 233
 234 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 235 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 236
 237
 238 === IRC help ===
 239
 240 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net