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 * $wgRestrictDisplayTitle controls if the use of the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic
  39   word is restricted to titles equivalent to the actual page title. This
  40   is true per default, but can be set to false to allow any title.
  41 * $wgSpamRegex may now be an array of multiple regular expressions.
  42 * $wgAjaxSearch has been removed; use $wgEnableMWSuggest instead.
  43
  44 === New features in 1.14 ===
  45
  46 * New URL syntaxes for Special:ListUsers - 'Special:ListUsers/USER' and
  47   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP/USER', in addition to the older syntax
  48   'Special:ListUsers/GROUP' where GROUP is a valid group name.
  49 * Configurable per-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form,
  50   respectively MediaWiki:Editnotice-# where # is the namespace number, and
  51   MediaWiki:Editnotice-#-PAGENAME where # is the page's namespace number and
  52   PAGENAME is the page name minus the namespace prefix.
  53 * (bug 8068) New __INDEX__ and __NOINDEX__ magic words allow user control of
  54   search engine indexing on a per-article basis.
  55 * Handheld stylesheet options
  56 * Added 'DoEditSectionLink' hook as a cleaner unified version of the old
  57   'EditSectionLink' and 'EditSectionLinkForOther' hooks.  Note that the
  58   'EditSectionLinkForOther' hook has been removed, but 'EditSectionLink' is
  59   run in all cases instead, so extensions using the old hooks should still work
  60   if they ran roughly the same code for both hooks (as is almost certain).
  61 * Signature (~~~~) "cleaning", i.e. template removal, can be disabled with
  62   $wgCleanSignatures=false
  63 * Extensions can use the SkinBuildSidebar hook to modify the content of the
  64   sidebar and add custom portlets to it
  65 * Added 'MakeGlobalVariablesScript' hook for extensions to be able to add vari-
  66   ables into into the output of Skin::makeVariablesScript
  67 * (bug 13846) Added $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups display on
  68   Special:ListGroupRights
  69 * (bug 14377) Add a date selector to history pages
  70 * (bug 15007) New 'pagetitle-view-mainpage' message allows the HTML <title> of
  71   the main page to be customized
  72 * Added $wgDisableTitleConversion to disabling the conversion for all pages on
  73   the wiki
  74 * Added 'noconvertlink' toggle that can be set per user preferences, also
  75   added 'convertlink=no|yes' on GET requests whether have the link titles
  76   being converted or not
  77 * (bug 14921) Special:Contributions/: add user name to <title>
  78   Patch by Emufarmers
  79 * Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness
  80 * Introduced a new hook 'SkinAfterContent' that allows extensions to add text
  81   after the page content and article metadata. Updated all skins and skin
  82   templates to work with that hook.
  83 * (bug 14929) removeUnusedAccounts.php now supports 'ignore-touched' and
  84   'ignore-groups'. Patch by Louperivois
  85 * (bug 15127) Work around minor display glitch in Opera.
  86 * By default, reject file uploads that look like ZIP files, to avoid the
  87   so-called GIFAR vulnerability.
  88 * (bug 15141) Give ability to only list protected pages with the cascading
  89   option enabled on Special:ProtectedPages
  90 * (bug 15157) Special:Watchlist has the same options as Special:Watchlist:
  91   Show/Hide logged in users, Show/Hide anonymous, Invert namespace selection
  92 * Added hook 'UserrightsChangeableGroups' to allow modification of what
  93   groups may be added or removed via the Special:UserRights interface.
  94 * HTML entities like &nbsp; now work (are not escaped) in edit summaries.
  95 * (bug 13815) In the comment for page moves, use the colon-separator message
  96   instead of a hardcoded colon.
  97 * Allow <gallery> to accept image names without an Image: prefix
  98 * Add tooltips to rollback and undo links
  99 * Backend upload code has been removed from SpecialUpload.php. This may cause
 100   backwards incompatibility with upload extensions.
 101 * BMP images are now displayed as PNG
 102 * (bug 13471) Added NUMBERINGROUP magic word
 103 * (bug 11884) Now support Flash EXIF attribute
 104 * Show thumbnails in the file history list, patch by User:Agbad
 105 * Added support of piped wikilinks using double-width brackets
 106
 107 === Bug fixes in 1.14 ===
 108
 109 * (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
 110 * (bug 14659) Passing the default limit param to Special:Recentchanges no more
 111   falls back to the user option
 112 * (bug 14954) Fix regression in Modern and Simple skins
 113 * Recursion loop check added to Categoryfinder class
 114 * Fixed few performance troubles of large job queue processing
 115 * Not setting various parameters in Foreign Repos now fails more gracefully
 116 * (bug 2333) Redirects are properly rendered when previewing an edit.
 117 * (bug 14972) Use localized alias of Special:Search on all search forms
 118 * (bug 11035) Special:Search should have descriptive <title>
 119 * Special pages are now not subject to special handling for "self-links"
 120 * (bug 15053) Syntactically incorrect redirects with another link in them
 121   no longer redirect to the second link
 122 * (bug 15049) Fix for CheckUser extension's log search: usernames containing
 123   a "-" were incorrectly turned into bogus IP range searches.
 124   Patch by Max Semenik.
 125 * (bug 15055) Talk page notifications no longer attempt to send mail when
 126   user's e-mail address is invalid or unconfirmed
 127 * (bug 12370) Add throttle on password attempts. Defaults to max 5 attempts in 5
 128   minutes.
 129 * (bug 15016) 'Templates used on this page' list in view source should be
 130   wrapped in a div with class "templatesUsed"
 131 * (bug 14868) Setting $wgFeedDiffCutoff to 0 now disables generation of the diff
 132   entirely, not just the display of it.
 133 * (bug 6387) Introduced new setting $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey which
 134   allows having the unprefixed page title as the default category sortkey
 135 * (bug 15079) Add class="ns-talk" / "ns-subject" to <body>. Also added
 136   ns-special to special pages.
 137 * (bug 15052) Skins should add their name as a class in <body>
 138 * (bug 14165, bug 14294) Wikimedia specific configuration in convertGrammar()
 139   for several languages was removed. The settings have been put in extension
 140   WikimediaMessages. Patch for Czech by Danny B.
 141 * (bug 15101) Displaying only bots edits in Special:Recentchanges now works
 142   again
 143 * (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
 144 * (bug 14790) Export of category pages when using Category: prefix now actually
 145   gives results
 146 * Avoid recursive crazy expansions in section edit comments for pages which
 147   contain '/*' in the title
 148 * Fix excessive memory usage when parsing pages with lots of links
 149 * $wgSpamRegex now matches the edit summary and page move descriptions in
 150   addition to body text.
 151 * Navigation links to images available from a shared repository (like Commons)
 152   from their local talk pages no longer appear as redlinks
 153 * Action=purge on ForeignApiFiles now works (purges their thumbnails and
 154   description pages).
 155 * (bug 15303) Title conversion for templates wasn't working in some cases.
 156 * (bug 15264) Underscores in Special:Search/Foo_bar parameters were taken
 157   literally; now converting them to spaces per expectation.
 158 * (bug 15342) "Invert" checkbox now works correctly when selecting main
 159   namespace in Special:Watchlist
 160 * (bug 15172) 'Go' button of Special:Recentchanges now on the same line as the
 161   last input element (like Special:Watchlist too)
 162 * (bug 15351) Fix fatal error for invalid section fragments in autocomments
 163 * Fixed intermittent deadlock errors involving objectcache table queries.
 164   Use a separate database connection for the objectcache table to avoid
 165   long-lasting locks on that table.
 166 * Respect file restrictions in the file history list
 167
 168
 169 === API changes in 1.14 ===
 170
 171 * Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now
 172   shown as empty instead of the current time.
 173 * API search now falls back to fulltext search by default when using Lucene
 174   or other engine which doesn't support a separate title search function.
 175   This means you can use API search on Wikipedia without explicitly adding
 176   &srwhat=text to the query.
 177 * Added iiprop=bitdepth to imageinfo and aiprop=bitdepth to allimages
 178 * (bug 14713) API-specific permissions (such as 'writeapi' and 'apihighlimits'
 179   are now listed on action=help
 180 * (bug 15044) Added requestid parameter to api.php to facilitate distinguishing
 181   between requests
 182 * (bug 15048) Added limit field for multivalue parameters to action=paraminfo
 183   output.
 184 * When the limit on multivalue parameters is exceeded, a warning is issued
 185 * list=search doesn't list missing pages any more
 186 * (bug 15178) Added clshow to prop=categories to allow filtering for hidden/
 187   non-hidden categories
 188 * (bug 15228) Combining revids= and redirects now throws a warning instead of an
 189   error, and still resolves redirects generated by the generator.
 190 * list={backlinks,embeddedin,imageusage} now return arrays with keys 0, 1, 2,
 191   etc. (AKA lists) instead of arrays with pageIDs as keys (AKA hash tables)
 192   for consistency with other list modules.
 193 * Added action=watch
 194 * (bug 15275) apprefix and related parameters ignore spaces at the end
 195 * action=edit no longer throws unknown error 228  when trying to create an empty
 196   section with section=new
 197 * Database replication lag doesn't cause all action=edit requests to return the
 198   nochange flag any more
 199
 200 === Languages updated in 1.14 ===
 201
 202 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 203 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.
 204
 205 * Fiji Hindi (Devanagari script) (hif-deva)
 206 * Krio (kri)
 207 * Lezghian (lez)
 208 * Laz (lzz)
 209 * Niuean (niu)
 210 * Oromo (om)
 211 * Plautdietsch (pdt)
 212 * Tarantino (roa-tara)
 213 * Serbo-Croatian (sh)
 214
 215 == Compatibility ==
 216
 217 MediaWiki 1.14 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 218
 219 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 220 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 221 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 222
 223 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 224 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 225
 226
 227 == Upgrading ==
 228
 229 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository,
 230 make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 231 database schema changes.
 232
 233 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 234 new database fields are filled with data.
 235
 236 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 237 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 238 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 239
 240 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 241
 242
 243 === Caveats ===
 244
 245 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 246 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 247 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 248 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 249 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 250
 251 For notes on 1.13.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 252
 253
 254 === Online documentation ===
 255
 256 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 257 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 258 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 259 the public domain) :
 260
 261   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 262
 263
 264 === Mailing list ===
 265
 266 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 267 wikitech-l list:
 268
 269   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 270
 271 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 272
 273   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 274
 275 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 276 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 277
 278
 279 === IRC help ===
 280
 281 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net