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 1.12 ==
   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 1.12 ===
  22 * Marking edits as bot edits with Special:Contributions?bot=1 now requires the
  23   markbotedit permission, rather than the rollback permission previously used.
  24   This permission is assigned by default to the sysop group.
  25
  26 === New features in 1.12 ===
  27 * (bug 10735) Add a warning for non-descriptive filenames at Special:Upload
  28 * Add {{filepath:}} parser function to get full path to an uploaded file,
  29   complementing {{fullurl:}} for pages.
  30 * (bug 11136) If using Postgres, search path is explicitly set if wgDBmwschema is
  31   not set to 'mediawiki', allowing multiple mediawiki instances per user.
  32 * (bug 11151) Add descriptive <title> to revision history page
  33 * (bug 5412) Add feed links for the site to all pages
  34 * (bug 11353) Add ability to retrieve raw section content via action=raw
  35 * Show relevant deletion log lines when uploading a previously deleted file
  36 * On SkinTemplate based skins (like MonoBook), omit confusing "edit"/"view source"
  37   tab entirely if the page doesn't exist and the user isn't allowed to create it
  38 * Clarify instructions given when an exception is thrown
  39 * AuthPlugin added strictUserAuth() method to allow per-user override
  40   of the strict() authentication behavior.
  41 * (bug 7872) Deleted revisions can now be viewed as diffs showing changes
  42   against the previous revision, whether currently deleted or live.
  43 * Added tooltips for the "Go" and "Search" buttons
  44 * (bug 11649) Show input form when Special:Whatlinkshere has no parameters
  45 * isValidEmailAddr hook added to User method of that name, to allow, e.g., re-
  46   stricting e-mail addresses to a specific domain
  47 * Removed "Clear" link in watchlist editor tools, as people were afraid to
  48   click it. Existing clear links will fall back to the raw editor, which is
  49   very easy to clear your watchlist with.
  50 * (bug 1405) Add wgUseNPPatrol option to control patroling for new articles
  51   on Special:Newpages
  52 * LogLine hook added to allow formatting custom entries in Special:Log.
  53 * Support for Iranian calendar
  54 * (bug 1401) Allow hiding logged-in users, bots and patrolled pages on Special:Newpages
  55 * ChangesListInsertArticleLink hook added for adding extra article info to RC.
  56 * MediaWikiPerformAction hook added for diverting control after the main
  57   globals have been set up but before any actions have been taken.
  58 * BeforeWatchlist hook added for filtering or replacing watchlist.
  59 * SkinTemplateTabAction hook added for altering the properties of tab links.
  60 * OutputPage::getRedirect public method added.
  61 * (bug 11848) Allow URL parameters 'editintro' and 'preload' in Special:Mypage
  62   and Special:Mytalk
  63 * Add ot=raw to Special:Allmessages
  64 * Support for Hebrew calendar
  65 * Support for Hebrew numerals in dates and times
  66 * (bug 11315) Signatures can be configured in [[MediaWiki:Signature]] and
  67   [[MediaWiki:Signature-anon]]
  68 * Signatures for anonymous users link to Special:Contributions page rather than user page
  69 * Added --override switch for disabled pages in updateSpecialPages.php
  70 * Provide a unique message (ipb_blocked_as_range) if unblock of a single IP fails
  71   because it is part of a blocked range.
  72 * (bug 3973) Use a separate message for the email content when an account is
  73   created by another user
  74
  75 === Bug fixes in 1.12 ===
  76
  77 * Subpages are now indexed for searching properly when using PostgreSQL
  78 * (bug 3846) Suppress warnings from, e.g. open_basedir when scanning for
  79   ImageMagick, diff3 et al. during installation [patch by Jan Reininghaus]
  80 * (bug 7027) Shift handling of deletion permissions-checking to
  81   getUserPermissionsErrors.
  82 * Login and signup forms are now more correct for right-to-left languages.
  83 * (bug 5387) Block log items on RecentChanges don't make use of possible
  84   translations
  85 * (bug 11211) Pass, as a parameter to the protectedpagetext interface
  86   message, the level of protection.
  87 * (bug 9611) Supply the blocker and reason for the cantcreateaccounttext
  88   message.
  89 * (bug 8759) Fixed bug where rollback was allowed on protected pages for wikis
  90   where rollback is given to non-sysops.
  91 * (bug 8834) Split off permission for editing user JavaScript and CSS from
  92   editinterface to a new permission key editusercssjs.
  93 * (bug 11266) Set fallback language for Fulfulde (ff) to French
  94 * (bug 11179) Include image version deletion comment in public log
  95 * Fixed notice when accessing special page without read permission and whitelist
  96   is not defined
  97 * (bug 9252) Fix for tidy funkiness when using editintro mode
  98 * (bug 4021) Fix for MySQL wildcard search
  99 * (bug 10699) Fix for MySQL phrase search
 100 * (bug 11321) Fix width of gallerybox when option "width=xxx" is used
 101 * (bug 7890) Special:BrokenRedirects links deleted redirects to a non-existent page
 102 * Fix initial statistics when installing: add correct values
 103 * (bug 11342) Fix several 'returnto' links in permissions/error pages which
 104   linked to the main page instead of targetted page
 105 * Strike the link to the redirect rather than using an asterisk in Special:Listredirects
 106 * (bug 11355) Fix false positives in Safe Mode and other config detection
 107   when boolean settings are disabled with 'Off' via php_admin_value/php_value
 108 * (bug 11292) Fixed unserialize errors with Postgres by creating special Blob object.
 109 * (bug 11363) Make all metadata fields bytea when using Postgres.
 110 * (bug 11331) Add buildConcat() and use CASE not IF for DB compatibility. Make oldimage
 111   cascade delete via image table for Postgres, change fa_storage_key TEXT.
 112 * (bug 11438) Live Preview chops returned text
 113 * Show the right message on account creation when the user is blocked
 114 * (bug 11450) Fix creation of objectcache table on upgrade
 115 * Fix namespace selection after submit of Special:Newpages
 116 * Make input form of Special:Newpages nicer for RTL wikis
 117 * (bug 11462) Fix typo in LanguageGetSpecialPageAliases hook name
 118 * (bug 11474) Fix unintentional fall-through in math error handling
 119 * (bug 11478) Fix undefined method call in file deletion interface
 120 * (bug 278) Search results no longer highlight incorrect partial word matches
 121 * Compatibility with incorrectly detected old-style DJVU mime types
 122 * (bug 11560) Fix broken HTML output from weird link nesting in edit comments.
 123   Nested links (as in image caption text) still don't work _right_ but they're
 124   less wrong
 125 * (bug 9718) Remove unnecessary css from main.css causing spacing issues on
 126   some browsers.
 127 * (bug 11574) Add an interface message loginstart, which, similarly to loginend,
 128   appears just before the login form. Patch by MinuteElectron.
 129 * Do not cache category pages if using 'from' or 'until'
 130 * Created new hook getUserPermissionsErrors, to go with userCan changes.
 131 * Diff pages did not properly display css/js pages.
 132 * (bug 11620) Add call to User::isValidEmailAddr during accout creation.
 133 * (bug 11629) If $wgEmailConfirmToEdit is true, require people to supply an
 134   email address when registering.
 135 * (bug 11612) Days to show in recent changes cannot be larger than 7
 136 * (bug 11131) Change filearchive width/height columns to int for Postgres
 137 * Support plural in undeleted{revisions,revisions-files,files}
 138 * (bug 11343) If the database is read-only, ensure that undelete fails.
 139 * (bug 11690) Show revert link for page moves in Special:Log to allowed users
 140   only
 141 * Initial-lowercase prefix checks in namespaceDupes.php now actually work.
 142 * Fix regression in LinkBatch.php breaking PHP 5.0
 143 * (bug 11452) wfMsgExt uses sometimes wrong language object for parsing magic
 144   words when called with options ''parsemag'' or ''content''.
 145 * (bug 11727) Support plural in 'historysize' message
 146 * (bug 11744) Incorrect return value from Title::getParentCategories()
 147 * (bug 11762) Fix native language name of Akan (ak)
 148 * (bug 11722) Fix inconsistent case in unprotect tabs
 149 * (bug 11795) Be more paranoid about confirming accept-encoding header is present
 150 * (bug 11809) Use formatNum() for more numbers
 151 * (bug 11818) Fix native language name of Inuktitut (iu)
 152 * Remove all commas when parsing float numbers in sorted tables
 153 * Limit text field of deletion, protection and user rights changes reasons to
 154   255 characters (already restricted in the database)
 155 * In the deletion default reasons, calculate how much text to get from the
 156   article text, rather than getting 150 characters (which may be too much)
 157 * Add two messages for Special:Blockme which were used but undefined
 158 * (bug 11921) Support plural in message number_of_watching_users_pageview
 159 * If an IP address is blocked as part of a rangeblock, attempting to unblock
 160   the single IP should not unblock the entire range.
 161 * (bug 6695) Fix native language name of Southern Sotho (Sesotho) (st)
 162 * Make action=render follow redirects by default
 163 * If restricted read access was enabled, whitelist didn't work with special
 164   pages which had spaces in theirs names
 165 * If restricted read access was enabled, requests for non-existing special pages
 166   threw an exception
 167 * Feeds for recent changes now provide correct URLs for the change, not just
 168   the page
 169 * Check for if IP is blocked as part of a range when unblocking (see above bug-
 170   fix) was faulty. Now fixed.
 171 * Fixed wpReason URL parameter to action=delete.
 172 * Do not force a password for account creation by email
 173 * Ensure that rate-limiting is applied to rollbacks.
 174 * Make a better rate-limiting error message (i.e. a normal MW error,
 175   rather than an "Internal Server Error").
 176
 177 == Parser changes in 1.12 ==
 178
 179 The parser pass order has changed from
 180
 181    * Extension tag strip and render
 182    * HTML normalisation and security
 183    * Template expansion
 184    * Main section...
 185
 186 to
 187
 188    * Template and extension tag parse to intermediate representation
 189    * Template expansion and extension rendering
 190    * HTML normalisation and security
 191    * Main section...
 192
 193 The main effect of this for the user is that the rules for uncovered syntax
 194 have changed.
 195
 196 Uncovered main-pass syntax, such as HTML tags, are now generally valid, whereas
 197 previously in some cases they were escaped. For example, you could have "<ta" in
 198 one template, and "ble>" in another template, and put them together to make a
 199 valid <table> tag. Previously the result would have been "&lt;table&gt;".
 200
 201 Uncovered preprocessor syntax is generally not recognised. For example, if you
 202 have "{{a" in Template:A and "b}}" in Template:B, then "{{a}}{{b}}" will be
 203 converted to a literal "{{ab}}" rather than the contents of Template:Ab. This
 204 was the case previously in HTML output mode, and is now uniformly the case in
 205 the other modes as well. HTML-style comments uncovered by template expansion
 206 will not be recognised by the preprocessor and hence will not prevent template
 207 expansion within them, but they will be stripped by the following HTML security
 208 pass.
 209
 210 The rules for template expansion during message transformation were
 211 counterintuitive, mostly accidental and buggy. There are a few small changes in
 212 this version: for example, templates with dynamic names, as in "{{ {{a}} }}",
 213 are fully expanded as they are in HTML mode, whereas previously only the inner
 214 template was expanded. I'd like to make some larger breaking changes to message
 215 transformation, after a review of typical use cases.
 216
 217 The header identification routines for section edit and for numbering section
 218 edit links have been merged. This removes a significant failure mode and fixes a
 219 whole category of bugs (tracked by bug #4899). Wikitext headings uncovered by
 220 template expansion or comment removal will still be rendered into a heading tag,
 221 and will get an entry in the TOC, but will not have a section edit link.
 222 HTML-style headings will also not have a section edit link. Valid wikitext
 223 headings present in the template source text will get a template section edit
 224 link. This is a major break from previous behaviour, but I believe the effects
 225 are almost entirely beneficial.
 226
 227 The main motivation for making these changes was performance. The new two-pass
 228 preprocessor can skip "dead branches" in template expansion, such as unfollowed
 229 #switch cases and unused defaults for template arguments. This provides a
 230 significant performance improvement in template-heavy test cases taken from
 231 Wikipedia. Parser function hooks can participate in this performance improvement
 232 by using the new SFH_OBJECT_ARGS flag during registration.
 233
 234 The pre-expand include size limit has been removed, since there's no efficient
 235 way to calculate such a figure, and it would now be meaningless for performance
 236 anyway. The "preprocessor node count" takes its place, with a generous default
 237 limit.
 238
 239 The context in which XML-style extension tags are called has changed, so
 240 extensions which make use of the parser state may need compatibility changes.
 241
 242 === API changes in 1.12 ===
 243
 244 Full API documentation is available at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API
 245
 246 * (bug 11275) Enable descending sort in categorymembers
 247 * (bug 11308) Allow the API to output the image metadata
 248 * (bug 11296) Temporary fix for escaping of ampersands inside links in pretty-printed
 249   help document.
 250 * (bug 11405) Expand templates implementation in the API
 251 * (bug 11218) Add option to feedwatchlist to display multiple revisions for each page.
 252 * (bug 11404) Provide name of exception caught in error code field of internal api
 253   error messages.
 254 * (bug 11534) rvendid doesn't work
 255 * Fixed rvlimit of the revisions query to only enforce the lower query limit if
 256   revision content is requested.
 257 * Include svn revision number (if install is checked-out from svn) in siteinfo query.
 258 * (bug 11173) Allow limited wikicode rendering via api.php
 259 * (bug 11572) API should provide interface for expanding templates
 260 * (bug 11569) Login should return the cookie prefix
 261 * (bug 11632) Breaking change: Specify the type of a change in the recentchanges list
 262   as 'edit', 'new', 'log' instead of 0, 1, 2, respectively.
 263 * Compatibility fix for PHP 5.0.x.
 264 * Add rctype parameter to list=recentchanges that filters by type
 265 * Add apprtype and apprlevel parameters to filter list=allpages by protection types and levels
 266 * Add apdir parameter to enable listing all pages from Z to A
 267 * (bug 11721) Use a different title for results than for the help page.
 268 * (bug 11562) Added a user_registration parameter/field to the list=allusers query.
 269 * (bug 11588) Preserve document structure for empty dataset in backlinks query.
 270 * Outputting list of all user preferences rather than having to request them by name
 271 * (bug 11206) api.php should honor maxlag
 272
 273 === Languages updated in 1.12 ===
 274
 275 * Afrikaans (af)
 276 * Akan (ak) (new)
 277 * Amharic (am) (new)
 278 * Aragonese (an)
 279 * Old English (ang) (new)
 280 * Arabic (ar)
 281 * Aramaic (arc)
 282 * Mapudungun (arn) (new)
 283 * Assamese (as)
 284 * Asturian (ast)
 285 * Aymara (ay)
 286 * Samogitian (bat-smg)
 287 * Boarisch (bar)
 288 * Bikol Central (bcl)
 289 * Belarusian Taraskievica orthography (be-tarask)
 290 * Bulgarian (bg)
 291 * Bislama (bi) (new)
 292 * Bamanankan (bm)
 293 * Bengali (bn)
 294 * Bishnupriya Manipuri (bpy)
 295 * Breton (br)
 296 * Buginese (bug) (new)
 297 * Catalan (ca)
 298 * Zamboangueño (cbk-zam) (new)
 299 * Chechen (ce)
 300 * Cebuano (ceb) (new)
 301 * Czech (cs)
 302 * Cassubian (csb)
 303 * Old Church Slavonic (cu)
 304 * Welsh (cy)
 305 * Danish (da)
 306 * German (de)
 307 * Lower Sorbian (dsb) (new)
 308 * Divehi (dv)
 309 * Ewe (ee) (new)
 310 * Greek (el)
 311 * English (en)
 312 * Spanish (es)
 313 * Extremaduran (ext)
 314 * Finnish (fi)
 315 * Persian (fa)
 316 * Fulah (ff)
 317 * Võro (fiu-vro)
 318 * Faroese (fo)
 319 * French (fr)
 320 * Cajun French (frc)
 321 * Franco-Provençal (frp)
 322 * Frisian (fy)
 323 * Irish (ga)
 324 * Gön-gnŷ (gan) (new)
 325 * Galician (gl)
 326 * Gilaki (glk) (new)
 327 * Ancient Greek (grc) (new)
 328 * Swiss German (gsw)
 329 * Hakka (hak)
 330 * Hebrew (he)
 331 * Croatian (hr)
 332 * Upper Sorbian (hsb)
 333 * Hungarian (hu)
 334 * Armenian (hy)
 335 * Interlingua (ia)
 336 * Indonesian (id)
 337 * Ingush (inh) (new)
 338 * Icelandic (is)
 339 * Italian (it)
 340 * Japanese (ja)
 341 * Georgian (ka)
 342 * Kara-Kalpak (kaa)
 343 * Kabyle (kab)
 344 * Kazakh (kk)
 345 * Kannada (kn)
 346 * Korean (ko)
 347 * Kölsch (ksh)
 348 * Kurdish (Latin) (ku-latn)
 349 * Cornish (kw) (new)
 350 * Latin (la)
 351 * Luxembourgish (lb) (new)
 352 * Lak (lbe) (new)
 353 * Limbugian (li)
 354 * Lozi (loz) (new)
 355 * Lingala (ln)
 356 * Lithuanian (lt)
 357 * Malayalam (ml)
 358 * Macedonian (mk)
 359 * Malay (ms)
 360 * Erzya (myv) (new)
 361 * Nahuatl (nah)
 362 * Min-nan (nan)
 363 * Low Saxon (nds)
 364 * Dutch Low Saxon (nds-nl)
 365 * Newari (new) (new)
 366 * Dutch (nl)
 367 * Norwegian (no)
 368 * Occitan (oc)
 369 * Deitsch (pdc) (new)
 370 * Polish (pl)
 371 * Piemontèis (pms)
 372 * Pontic (pnt) (new)
 373 * Pashto (ps)
 374 * Portugese (pt)
 375 * Quechua (qu)
 376 * Rhaeto-Romance (rm) (new)
 377 * Romanian (ro)
 378 * Russian (ru)
 379 * Sakha (sah)
 380 * Sardinian (sc)
 381 * Sicilian (scn)
 382 * Sindhi (sd)
 383 * Sassarese (sdc) (new)
 384 * Seri (sei) (new)
 385 * Tachelhit (shi)
 386 * Slovak (sk)
 387 * Serbian (Cyrillic) (sr-ec)
 388 * Swati (ss) (new)
 389 * Saterland Frisian (stq) (new)
 390 * Sundanese (su)
 391 * Swedish (sv)
 392 * Tamil (ta)
 393 * Teluga (te)
 394 * Tetun (tet) (new)
 395 * Tajik (tg)
 396 * Tagalog (tl) (new)
 397 * Turkish (tr)
 398 * Tuvinian (tyv)
 399 * Uyghur (ug)
 400 * Venitian (vec)
 401 * Vietnamese (vi)
 402 * West Flemish (vls)
 403 * Volapük (vo)
 404 * Walloon (wa)
 405 * Wolof (wo)
 406 * Wu (wuu) (new)
 407 * Yiddish (yi)
 408 * Cantonese (yue)
 409 * Zhuang (za)
 410 * Zealandic (zea)
 411 * Old Chinese/Late Time Chinese (zh-classical)
 412 * Chinese (Simplified) (zh-hans)
 413 * Chinese (Traditional) (zh-hant)
 414
 415 == Compatibility ==
 416
 417 MediaWiki 1.12 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 418
 419 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 420 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 421 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 422
 423 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 424 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 425
 426
 427 == Upgrading ==
 428
 429 1.12 has several database changes since 1.11, and will not work without schema
 430 updates.
 431
 432 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 433 new database fields are filled with data.
 434
 435 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 436 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 437 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 438
 439 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 440
 441
 442 === Caveats ===
 443
 444 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 445 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 446 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 447 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 448 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 449
 450 For notes on 1.11.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 451
 452
 453 === Online documentation ===
 454
 455 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 456 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 457 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 458 the public domain) :
 459
 460   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 461
 462
 463 === Mailing list ===
 464
 465 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 466 wikitech-l list:
 467
 468   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 469
 470 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 471
 472   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 473
 474 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 475 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 476
 477
 478 === IRC help ===
 479
 480 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net