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 part
  78   for a given title.
  79 * Styled #mw-data-after-content in cologneblue.css to match the rest of the font (bug 17110)
  80 * (bug 7556) Time zone names in signatures lack i18n
  81 * (bug 3311) Automatic category redirects
  82
  83 === Bug fixes in 1.15 ===
  84 * (bug 16968) Special:Upload no longer throws useless warnings.
  85 * (bug 17000) Special:RevisionDelete now checks if the database is locked
  86   before trying to delete the edit.
  87 * (bug 16852) padleft and padright now handle multibyte characters correctly
  88 * (bug 17010) maintenance/namespaceDupes.php now add the suffix recursively if
  89   the destination page exists
  90 * (bug 17035) Special:Upload now fails gracefully if PHP's file_uploads has
  91   been disabled
  92 * Fixing the caching issue by using -{T|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with
  93   LanguageConverter class)
  94 * Improving the efficiency by using -{A|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with
  95   LanguageConverter class)
  96 * (bug 17054) Added more descriptive errors in Special:RevisionDelete
  97 * (bug 11527) Diff on page with one revision shows "Next" link to same diff
  98 * (bug 8065) Fix summary forcing for new pages
  99 * (bug 10569) redirects to Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk are no longer
 100   allowed by default. Change $wgInvalidRedirectTargets to re-enable.
 101 * (bug 3043) Feed links of given page are now preceded by standard feed icon
 102 * (bug 17150) escapeLike now escapes literal \ properly
 103 * Inconsistent use of sysop, admin, administrator in system messages changed
 104   to 'administrator'
 105 * (bug 14423) Check block flag validity for block logging
 106 * DB transaction and slave-lag avoidance tweaks for Email Notifications
 107 * (bug 17104) Removed [Mark as patrolled] link for already patrolled revisions
 108 * (bug 17106) Added 'redirect=no' and 'mw-redirect' class to redirects at
 109   "user contributions"
 110 * Rollback links on new pages removed from "user contributions"
 111 * (bug 15811) Re-upload form tweaks: license fields removed, destination locked,
 112   comment label uses better message
 113 * Whole HTML validation ($wgValidateAllHtml) now works with external tidy
 114 * Parser tests no longer fail when $wgExternalLinkTarget is set in LocalSettings
 115 * (bug 15391) catch DBQueryErrors on external storage insertion. This avoids error
 116   messages on save were the edit in fact is saved.
 117 * (bug 17184) Remove duplicate "z" accesskey in MonoBook
 118 * Parser tests no longer fail when $wgAlwaysUseTidy is set in LocalSettings.php
 119 * Removed redundant dupe warnings on reupload for the same title. Dupe warnings
 120   for identical files at different titles are still given.
 121 * Add 'change tagging' facility, where changes can be tagged internally with
 122   certain designations, which are displayed on various summaries of changes, and
 123   the entries can be styled with CSS.
 124 * (bug 17207) Fix regression breaking category page display on PHP 5.1
 125 * Categoryfinder utility class no longer fails on invalid input or gives wrong
 126   results for category names that include pseudo-namespaces
 127 * (bug 17252) Galician numbering format
 128 * (bug 17146) Fix for UTF-8 and short word search for some possible MySQL configs
 129 * (bug 7480) Internationalize database error message
 130 * (bug 16555) Number of links to mediawiki.org scaled back on post-installation
 131 * (bug 14938) Removing a section no longer leaves excess whitespace
 132 * (bug 17304) Fixed fatal error when thumbnails couldn't be generated for file
 133   history
 134
 135 == API changes in 1.15 ==
 136 * (bug 16858) Revamped list=deletedrevs to make listing deleted contributions
 137   and listing all deleted pages possible
 138 * (bug 16844) Added clcategories parameter to prop=categories
 139 * (bug 17025) Add "fileextension" parameter to meta=siteinfo&siprop=
 140 * (bug 17048) Show the 'new' flag in list=usercontribs for the revision that
 141   created the page, even if it's not the top revision
 142 * (bug 17069) Added ucshow=patrolled|!patrolled to list=usercontribs
 143 * action=delete respects $wgDeleteRevisionsLimit and the bigdelete user right
 144 * (bug 15949) Add undo functionality to action=edit
 145 * (bug 16483) Kill filesort in ApiQueryBacklinks caused by missing parentheses.
 146   Building query properly now using makeList()
 147 * (bug 17182) Fix pretty printer so URLs with parentheses in them are
 148   autolinked correctly
 149 * (bug 17224) Added siprop=rightsinfo to meta=siteinfo
 150 * (bug 17239) Added prop=displaytitle to action=parse
 151
 152 === Languages updated in 1.15 ===
 153
 154 MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated
 155 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 156 changes to languages because of MediaZilla reports.
 157
 158 * Austrian German (de-at) (new)
 159 * Swiss Standard German (de-ch) (new)
 160 * Literary Chinese (lzh) (new)
 161 * Võro (vro) (renamed from fiu-vro)
 162 * (bug 17151) Add magic word alias for #redirect for Vietnamese
 163 * (bug 17288) Messages improved for default language (English)
 164
 165 == Compatibility ==
 166
 167 MediaWiki 1.15 requires PHP 5 (5.2 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 168
 169 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 170 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 171 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 172
 173 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 174 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 175
 176
 177 == Upgrading ==
 178
 179 1.15 has several database changes since 1.14, and will not work without schema
 180 updates.
 181
 182 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons reposito-
 183 ry, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 184 database schema changes.
 185
 186 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 187 new database fields are filled with data.
 188
 189 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 190 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 191 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 192
 193 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 194
 195
 196 === Caveats ===
 197
 198 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 199 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 200 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 201 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 202 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 203
 204 For notes on 1.14.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 205
 206
 207 === Online documentation ===
 208
 209 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 210 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 211 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 212 the public domain) :
 213
 214   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 215
 216
 217 === Mailing list ===
 218
 219 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 220 wikitech-l list:
 221
 222   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 223
 224 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 225
 226   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 227
 228 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 229 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 230
 231
 232 === IRC help ===
 233
 234 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net