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 1.15 ==
   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 1.15 ===
  22
  23 * Added $wgNewPasswordExpiry, to specify an expiry time (in seconds) to
  24   temporary passwords
  25 * Added $wgUseTwoButtonsSearchForm to choose the Search form behavior/look
  26 * Added $wgNoFollowDomainExceptions to allow exempting particular domain names
  27   from rel="nofollow" on external links
  28
  29 === New features in 1.15 ===
  30
  31 * (bug 2242) Add an expiry time to temporary passwords
  32 * (bug 9947) Add PROTECTIONLEVEL parser function to return the protection level
  33   for the current page for a given action
  34 * (bug 17002) Add &minor= and &summary= as parameters in the url when editing,
  35   to automatically add a summary or a minor edit.
  36 * (bug 16852) padleft and padright now accept multiletter pad characters
  37 * When using 'UserCreateForm' hook to add new checkboxes into
  38   Special:UserLogin/signup, the messages can now contain HTML to allow
  39   hyperlinking to the site's Terms of Service page, for example
  40 * Add new hook 'UserLoadFromDatabase' that is called while loading a user
  41   from the database.
  42 * (bug 17045) Options on the block form are prefilled with the options of the
  43   existing block when modifying an existing block.
  44 * (bug 17055) "(show/hide)" links to Special:RevisionDelete now use a CSS class
  45   rather than hardcoded HTML tags
  46 * Added new hook 'WantedPages::getSQL' into SpecialWantedpages.php to allow
  47   extensions to alter the SQL query which is used to get the list of wanted
  48   pages
  49 * (bugs 16957/16969) Add show/hide to preferences for RC patrol options on
  50   specialpages
  51 * (bug 11443) Auto-noindex user/user talk pages for blocked user
  52 * (bug 11644) Add $wgMaxRedirects variable to control how many redirects are
  53   recursed through until the "destination" page is reached.
  54 * Add $wgInvalidRedirectTargets variable to prevent redirects to certain
  55   special pages.
  56 * Use HTML5 rel attributes for some links, where appropriate
  57 * Added optional alternative Search form look - Go button & Advanced search
  58   link instead of Go button & Search button
  59 * (bug 2314) Add links to user custom CSS and JS to Special:Preferences
  60 * More helpful error message on raw page access if PHP_SELF isn't set
  61 * (bug 13040) Gender switch in user preferences
  62 * (bug 13040) {{GENDER:}} magic word for interface messages
  63 * (bug 3301) Optionally sort user list according to account creation time
  64 * Remote description pages for foreign file repos are now fetched in the
  65   content language.
  66 * (bug 17180) If $wgUseFileCache is enabled, $wgShowIPinHeader is automatically
  67   set to false.
  68 * (bug 16604) Mark non-patrolled edits in feeds with "!"
  69 * (bug 16604) Show title/rev in IRC for patrol log
  70 * (bug 16854) Whether a page is being parsed as a preview or section preview
  71   can now be determined and set with ParserOptions.
  72 * Wrap message 'confirmemail_pending' into a div with CSS classes "error" and
  73   "mw-confirmemail-pending"
  74 * Local redirects to foreign images are now displayed on the ImagePage when
  75   viewing on the local wiki.
  76 * (bug 8249) The magic words for namespaces and pagenames can now be used as
  77   parser functions to return the desired namespace or normalized title/title
  78   part for a given title.
  79 * (bug 17110) Styled #mw-data-after-content in cologneblue.css to match the
  80   rest of the font
  81 * (bug 7556) Time zone names in signatures lack i18n
  82 * (bug 3311) Automatic category redirects
  83 * (bug 17236) Suppress 'watch user page link' for IP range blocks
  84 * Wrap message 'searchresulttext' (Special:Search) into a div with
  85   class "mw-searchresult"
  86 * (bug 15283) Interwiki imports can now fetch included templates
  87 * Treat svn:// URLs as external links by default
  88 * New function to convert namespace text for display (only applies on wiki with
  89   LanguageConverter class)
  90 * (bug 17379) Contributions-title is now parsed for magic words.
  91 * Preprocessor output now cached in memcached.
  92 * (bug 14468) Lines in classic RecentChanges and Watchlist have classes
  93   "mw-line-odd" and "mw-line-even" to make styling using css possible.
  94 * (bug 17311) Add a note beside the gender selection menu to tell users that
  95   this information will be public
  96 * Localize time zone regions in Special:Preferences
  97 * Add NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS magic word, which is like NUMBEROFUSERS, but uses
  98   the active users data from site_stats.
  99 * (bug 13040) Gender-aware user namespace aliases
 100 * Add a <link rel="canonical"> tag on redirected page views
 101
 102 === Bug fixes in 1.15 ===
 103 * (bug 16968) Special:Upload no longer throws useless warnings.
 104 * (bug 17000) Special:RevisionDelete now checks if the database is locked
 105   before trying to delete the edit.
 106 * (bug 16852) padleft and padright now handle multibyte characters correctly
 107 * (bug 17010) maintenance/namespaceDupes.php now add the suffix recursively if
 108   the destination page exists
 109 * (bug 17035) Special:Upload now fails gracefully if PHP's file_uploads has
 110   been disabled
 111 * Fixing the caching issue by using -{T|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with
 112   LanguageConverter class)
 113 * Improving the efficiency by using -{A|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with
 114   LanguageConverter class)
 115 * (bug 17054) Added more descriptive errors in Special:RevisionDelete
 116 * (bug 11527) Diff on page with one revision shows "Next" link to same diff
 117 * (bug 8065) Fix summary forcing for new pages
 118 * (bug 10569) redirects to Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk are no longer
 119   allowed by default. Change $wgInvalidRedirectTargets to re-enable.
 120 * (bug 3043) Feed links of given page are now preceded by standard feed icon
 121 * (bug 17150) escapeLike now escapes literal \ properly
 122 * Inconsistent use of sysop, admin, administrator in system messages changed
 123   to 'administrator'
 124 * (bug 14423) Check block flag validity for block logging
 125 * DB transaction and slave-lag avoidance tweaks for Email Notifications
 126 * (bug 17104) Removed [Mark as patrolled] link for already patrolled revisions
 127 * (bug 17106) Added 'redirect=no' and 'mw-redirect' class to redirects at
 128   "user contributions"
 129 * Rollback links on new pages removed from "user contributions"
 130 * (bug 15811) Re-upload form tweaks: license fields removed, destination locked,
 131   comment label uses better message
 132 * Whole HTML validation ($wgValidateAllHtml) now works with external tidy
 133 * Parser tests no longer fail when $wgExternalLinkTarget is set in
 134   LocalSettings
 135 * (bug 15391) catch DBQueryErrors on external storage insertion. This avoids
 136   error messages on save were the edit in fact is saved.
 137 * (bug 17184) Remove duplicate "z" accesskey in MonoBook
 138 * Parser tests no longer fail when $wgAlwaysUseTidy is set in LocalSettings.php
 139 * Removed redundant dupe warnings on reupload for the same title. Dupe warnings
 140   for identical files at different titles are still given.
 141 * Add 'change tagging' facility, where changes can be tagged internally with
 142   certain designations, which are displayed on various summaries of changes,
 143   and the entries can be styled with CSS.
 144 * (bug 17207) Fix regression breaking category page display on PHP 5.1
 145 * Categoryfinder utility class no longer fails on invalid input or gives wrong
 146   results for category names that include pseudo-namespaces
 147 * (bug 17252) Galician numbering format
 148 * (bug 17146) Fix for UTF-8 and short word search for some possible MySQL
 149   configs
 150 * (bug 7480) Internationalize database error message
 151 * (bug 16555) Number of links to mediawiki.org scaled back on post-installation
 152 * (bug 14938) Removing a section no longer leaves excess whitespace
 153 * (bug 17304) Fixed fatal error when thumbnails couldn't be generated for file
 154   history
 155 * (bug 17283) Remove double URL escaping in show/hide links for log entries
 156   and RevisionDeleteForm::__construct
 157 * (bug 17105) Numeric table sorting broken
 158 * (bug 17231) Transcluding special pages on wikis using language conversion no
 159   longer affects the page title
 160 * (bug 6702) Default system messages updated/improved
 161 * (bug 17190) User ID on preference page no longer has delimeters
 162 * (bug 17341) "Powered by MediaWiki" should be on the left on RTL wikis
 163 * (bug 17404) "userrights-interwiki" right was missing in User::$mCoreRights
 164 * (bug 7509) Separation strings should be configurable
 165 * (bug 17420) Send the correct content type from action=raw when the HTML file
 166   cache is enabled.
 167 * (bug 12746) Do not allow new password e-mails when wiki is in read-only mode
 168 * (bug 17478) Fixed a PHP Strict standards error in
 169   maintenance/cleanupWatchlist.php
 170
 171 == API changes in 1.15 ==
 172 * (bug 16858) Revamped list=deletedrevs to make listing deleted contributions
 173   and listing all deleted pages possible
 174 * (bug 16844) Added clcategories parameter to prop=categories
 175 * (bug 17025) Add "fileextension" parameter to meta=siteinfo&siprop=
 176 * (bug 17048) Show the 'new' flag in list=usercontribs for the revision that
 177   created the page, even if it's not the top revision
 178 * (bug 17069) Added ucshow=patrolled|!patrolled to list=usercontribs
 179 * action=delete respects $wgDeleteRevisionsLimit and the bigdelete user right
 180 * (bug 15949) Add undo functionality to action=edit
 181 * (bug 16483) Kill filesort in ApiQueryBacklinks caused by missing parentheses.
 182   Building query properly now using makeList()
 183 * (bug 17182) Fix pretty printer so URLs with parentheses in them are
 184   autolinked correctly
 185 * (bug 17224) Added siprop=rightsinfo to meta=siteinfo
 186 * (bug 17239) Added prop=displaytitle to action=parse
 187 * (bug 17317) Added watch parameter to action=protect
 188 * (bug 17007) Added export and exportnowrap parameters to action=query
 189 * (bug 17326) BREAKING CHANGE: Changed output format for iiprop=metadata
 190 * (bug 17355) Added auwitheditsonly parameter to list=allusers
 191 * (bug 17007) Added action=import
 192 * BREAKING CHANGE: Removed rctitles parameter from list=recentchanges because
 193   of performance concerns
 194 * Listing (semi-)deleted revisions and log entries as well in prop=revisions
 195   and list=logevents
 196 * (bug 11430) BREAKING CHANGE: Modules may return fewer results than the
 197   limit and still set a query-continue in some cases
 198 * (bug 17357) Added movesubpages parameter to action=move
 199 * (bug 17433) Added bot flag to list=watchlist&wlprop=flags output
 200
 201 === Languages updated in 1.15 ===
 202
 203 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 204 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 205 changes to languages because of MediaZilla reports.
 206
 207 * Austrian German (de-at) (new)
 208 * Swiss Standard German (de-ch) (new)
 209 * Literary Chinese (lzh) (new)
 210 * Võro (vro) (renamed from fiu-vro)
 211 * (bug 17151) Add magic word alias for #redirect for Vietnamese
 212 * (bug 17288) Messages improved for default language (English)
 213 * (bug 12937) Update native name for Afar
 214 * (bug 16909) 'histlegend' now reuses messages instead of copying them
 215
 216 == Compatibility ==
 217
 218 MediaWiki 1.15 requires PHP 5 (5.2 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 219
 220 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 221 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 222 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 223
 224 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 225 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 226
 227
 228 == Upgrading ==
 229
 230 1.15 has several database changes since 1.14, and will not work without schema
 231 updates.
 232
 233 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons reposito-
 234 ry, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 235 database schema changes.
 236
 237 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 238 new database fields are filled with data.
 239
 240 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 241 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 242 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 243
 244 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 245
 246
 247 === Caveats ===
 248
 249 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 250 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 251 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 252 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 253 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 254
 255 For notes on 1.14.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 256
 257
 258 === Online documentation ===
 259
 260 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 261 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 262 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 263 the public domain) :
 264
 265   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 266
 267
 268 === Mailing list ===
 269
 270 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 271 wikitech-l list:
 272
 273   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 274
 275 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 276
 277   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 278
 279 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 280 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 281
 282
 283 === IRC help ===
 284
 285 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net