RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 == Version 1.3.0pre-alpha ==
   4
   5 Look & layout:
   6 * New default layout 'MonoBook'
   7 * Print stylesheet now built-in to every page
   8 * More or less correct XHTML 1.0 (served as text/html by default)
   9
  10 Wiki features:
  11 * Image captions can now include links and other basic formatting
  12 * Templates have been expanded with parameters, and separated from
  13   the MediaWiki: localization scheme.
  14 * Categories more or less work
  15
  16 Editing:
  17 * Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere
  18 * Edit summaries can now include basic formatting and links
  19
  20 Metadata and output:
  21 * Linked Creative Commons copyright metadata (optional)
  22 * RSS 2.0 feeds for Recent Changes, New Pages
  23
  24 Optional modules:
  25 * WikiHiero hieroglyphic module can be added (separate download)
  26 * TeX now has an experimental MathML output mode (incomplete)
  27
  28 Installation and upgrading:
  29 * The old install.php and update.php have been removed. In-place
  30   installation introduced in 1.2 is now the standard installation
  31   and upgrade method, see INSTALL for directions.
  32
  33 Database:
  34 * The links table has been changed to use a cur_id for l_from.
  35   The link tables must be converted on upgrade, which may entail
  36   some downtime.
  37
  38 Code and compatibility:
  39 * Should now run clean with error reporting set to E_ALL.
  40 * register_globals hack from 1.2 has been replaced with safer code
  41 * Bundled PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
  42
  43 === Caveats ===
  44
  45 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
  46 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
  47 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
  48 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
  49 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
  50
  51
  52 == Version 1.2.5, 2004-05-01 ==
  53 * Fixed install problem with blank root password
  54 * Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
  55 * Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
  56 * Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
  57 * Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
  58 * IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
  59 * Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack
  60
  61 == Version 1.2.4, 2004-04-13 ==
  62
  63 * Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
  64 * Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
  65 * Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
  66 * Backported optional open proxy blocker
  67 * Backported $wgWhitelistRead
  68 * $wgCapitalLinks option to force full case sensitivity in titles
  69 * Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
  70 * Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the "die()" call to use)
  71
  72 == Version 1.2.3, 2004-04-02 ==
  73
  74 * Fixed an in-place install bug with non-root MySQL user
  75 * Fixed history diff checkboxes bug on titles with ampersands
  76 * Fixed printable link bug on special pages with parameters
  77 * Fixed bug that broke IP blocking w/o memcached
  78 * Turns off E_NOTICE warnings if PHP settings have them on
  79   (you can grope in and turn this off if you like to debug)
  80
  81 == Version 1.2.2, 2004-03-28 ==
  82
  83 * Fixed an upgrade bug introduced in 1.2.1.
  84 * Disabled $wgUseCategoryMagic, which feature is incomplete broken
  85
  86 == Version 1.2.1, 2004-03-27 ==
  87
  88 Installation, compatibility, security fixlets:
  89 * Detect use of PHP as CGI and disable index.php/Title URLs
  90 * Try to auto-create math tmp & output directories if not present
  91 * Disable Asksql in default install ($wgAllowSysopQueries)
  92 * Better handling of get_magic_quotes_gpc (apostrophe problems)
  93 * French localisation no longer hard-codes "Wikipedia" name
  94
  95 == Version 1.2.0 ==
  96
  97 New features in 1.2:
  98 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
  99 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
 100 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
 101 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
 102   may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
 103   (The exact details of this may change in the future)
 104 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
 105 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
 106 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
 107 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
 108 * Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies
 109   (off by default in user preferences)
 110 * Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
 111 * It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki.
 112   An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat"
 113   privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install.
 114
 115 Fixes and tweaks:
 116 * Now works with register_globals off!
 117 * Works with short tags disabled.
 118 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
 119   $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
 120   for a slight rendering speed boost.
 121 * rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or
 122   overwrite everything.
 123 * Various bug fixes.
 124 * Other stuff we forgot.
 125 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!
 126
 127 === Behavior changes ===
 128
 129 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php
 130   The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't
 131   conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
 132 * Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in
 133   DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
 134 * Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can
 135   be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you
 136   don't want the performance hit.
 137
 138 === Database changes ===
 139
 140 An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
 141 (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).
 142
 143 Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
 144 (patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).
 145
 146
 147 == Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==
 148
 149 This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
 150 to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
 151 release.
 152
 153 New features in 1.1:
 154 * New wiki table syntax:
 155   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
 156 * User-editable interface messages:
 157   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
 158 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
 159   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
 160   (There is not yet an import function!)
 161 * "Magic words"
 162
 163 Fixes and tweaks:
 164 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
 165 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
 166 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
 167 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
 168 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
 169 * Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
 170 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
 171 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
 172 * Various exciting new profiling options.
 173 * Debug log is off by default.
 174 * Various small bugs fixed.
 175
 176 Internal changes:
 177 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
 178   is not actually used so far.
 179 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
 180   but disabled.
 181 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
 182
 183 New translations:
 184 * fi - Finnish
 185 * ia - Interlingua
 186 * no - Norwegian
 187 * sk - Slovak
 188 * ta - Tamil
 189
 190 === Database changes ===
 191
 192 "linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
 193 run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.
 194
 195 Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:
 196
 197 == mediawiki-20031118 ==
 198
 199 * Image deletion fixed.
 200 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
 201   (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 202 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 203 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.
 204
 205 == mediawiki-20031117 ==
 206
 207 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 208 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 209 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
 210   to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
 211   password cookies.
 212 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 213 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 214 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 215 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 216 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 217 * Updates to some translations.
 218 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 219 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 220 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 221 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
 222   added compatibility functions that might or might not help
 223
 224 No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.
 225
 226
 227 == mediawiki-20031107 ==
 228
 229 * Fixed various bugs!
 230 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 231 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 232 * New translations (see below)
 233 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 234 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
 235   the db is locked or the page is protected.
 236 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 237 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 238 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)
 239
 240
 241 === Security note ===
 242
 243 Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
 244 you can reenable uploads by putting:
 245
 246   $wgDisableUploads = false;
 247
 248 into LocalSettings.php.
 249
 250 Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
 251 in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
 252 user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.
 253
 254 As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
 255 You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
 256 stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:
 257
 258   <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
 259      # Ignore .htaccess files
 260      AllowOverride None
 261
 262      # Serve HTML as plaintext
 263      AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
 264
 265      # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
 266      php_admin_flag engine off
 267
 268      # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
 269   </Directory>
 270
 271
 272 === Database updates ===
 273
 274 If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
 275 be made automatically.
 276
 277 To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
 278 following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:
 279
 280   archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
 281   archives/patch-interwiki.sql
 282   archives/patch-indexes.sql
 283   interwiki.sql
 284
 285 To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:
 286
 287   wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 288
 289
 290 === Translations ===
 291
 292 New interface localization files are included for:
 293   fy Frisian
 294   ro Romanian
 295   sl Slovene
 296   sq Albanian
 297   sr Serbian
 298
 299
 300 === Memcached ===
 301
 302 Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
 303 MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
 304 to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
 305 talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
 306 UTF-8 conversion tables.
 307
 308 MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
 309 Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
 310 minimal overhead.
 311
 312 To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
 313 in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.
 314
 315 Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
 316 local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
 317 sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
 318 other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)
 319
 320 To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
 321 appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
 322 volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
 323 when this option is turned on.
 324
 325
 326 === Online documentation ===
 327
 328 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 329 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 330 License:
 331
 332   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
 333
 334
 335 === Mailing list ===
 336
 337 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 338 wikitech-l list:
 339
 340   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 341
 342
 343 === UseModWiki import script ===
 344
 345 A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
 346 subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
 347 does function for the brave and pure of heart.
 348
 349
 350 === Test suite removed ===
 351
 352 The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
 353 release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.
 354
 355
 356 == mediawiki-20030829 ==
 357
 358 First release under MediaWiki name.