RELEASE-NOTES-1.24

   1 Security reminder: If you have PHP's register_globals option set, you must
   2 turn it off. MediaWiki will no longer work with it enabled.
   3
   4 == MediaWiki 1.24 ==
   5
   6 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
   7
   8 MediaWiki 1.24 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in
   9 production.
  10
  11 === Configuration changes in 1.24 ===
  12 * MediaWiki will no longer run if register_globals is enabled. It has been
  13   deprecated for 5 years now, and was removed in PHP 5.4. For more information
  14   about why, see <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/register_globals>.
  15 * The server's canonical hostname is available as $wgServerName, which is
  16   exposed in both mw.config and ApiQuerySiteInfo.
  17 * Introduced $wgPagePropsHaveSortkey as a backwards-compatibility switch,
  18   for using the old schema of the page_props table, in case the respective
  19   schema update was not applied.
  20 * $wgSearchEverythingOnlyLoggedIn was removed as the 'searcheverything'
  21   user option was removed. Use $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault instead or
  22   if you used to have $wgDefaultUserOptions['searcheverything'] = 1.
  23 * $wgMasterWaitTimeout has been deprecated.
  24 * $wgDBClusterTimeout has been removed.
  25 * $wgProxyKey has been removed. It is no longer used by MediaWiki core.
  26   Ensure $wgSecretKey is set in LocalSettings.php.
  27 * $wgExtraInterlanguageLinkPrefixes is a new configuration variable that
  28   contains an array of interwiki prefixes that should be treated as language
  29   prefixes (i.e. turned into interlanguage links when $wgInterwikiMagic is set
  30   to true).
  31 * $wgParserTestRemote has been removed.
  32 * $wgCountTotalSearchHits has been removed. If you're concerned about efficiency
  33   of search, you should use something like CirrusSearch instead of built in
  34   search.
  35 * Users in the 'sysop' group have access to Special:MergeHistory by default.
  36
  37 === New features in 1.24 ===
  38 * Added a new hook, "WhatLinksHereProps", to allow extensions to annotate
  39   WhatLinksHere entries.
  40 * Added a new hook, "ContentGetParserOutput", to customize parser output for
  41   a given content object.
  42 * Deprecated the hook "ShowRawCssJs", use "ContentGetParserOutput" instead.
  43 * HTMLForm's HTMLTextField now supports the 'url' type.
  44 * HTMLForm fields may now be dynamically hidden based on the values of other
  45   fields in the form.
  46 * HTMLForm now supports multiple copies of an input field or set of input
  47   fields, e.g. the form may request "one or more usernames" without having to
  48   have the user enter delimited list of names into a text field.
  49 * Added a new hook, "SidebarBeforeOutput", to allow to edit the structure of
  50   the sidebar just before its display.
  51 * (bug 49156) Added the mediawiki.cookie ResourceLoader module, which wraps
  52   jquery.cookie so that getting/setting a cookie is syntactically and
  53   functionally similar to using the WebRequest::getCookie() and
  54   WebResponse::setcookie() methods.
  55 * (bug 44740) jQuery upgraded from 1.8.3 to 1.11.1. A new configuration option,
  56   $wgIncludejQueryMigrate, also loads the jQuery Migrate hack to let extensions
  57   and gadgets use the long-deprecated functions that were removed in jQuery 1.9.
  58   This option is turned off by default, and will be removed in MediaWiki 1.25.
  59 * (bug 47076) jQuery UI upgraded from 1.8.24 to 1.9.2.
  60 * Changes to content typography (fonts, etc.). See
  61   https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh for further information.
  62 * WikitextContent will now render redirects with the expected "redirect"
  63   header, rather than as an ordered list. Code calling Article::viewRedirect
  64   can probably be changed to no longer special-case redirects.
  65 * Header font set to a serif font stack. See
  66   https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh for further information.
  67 * (bug 65567) Added a new hook, "BeforeHttpsRedirect", to allow cancellation of
  68   the HTTP to HTTPS redirect due to forceHTTPS cookie, userRequires, etc. This
  69   is only for page views, since this hook doesn't affect UserLogin, OAuth,
  70   CentralAuth, etc. ATTENTION: This hook is likely to be removed soon due to
  71   overall design of the system.
  72 * (bug 17367) It is now possible to add pages to your watchlist from
  73   Special:UnwatchedPages without reloading the special page.
  74 * New methods setVolatile and isVolatile are added to PPFrame, so that
  75   extensions such as Cite.php can mark that their output is volatile and
  76   shouldn't be cached.
  77 * (bug 52817) Advanced search options are now saved on the search page itself,
  78   rather than in a dedicated pane in the preferences panel.
  79 * (bug 44591) The dropdown actions menu (little triangle next to page tabs) in
  80   the Vector skin has gained a label that should make it more discoverable.
  81 * MWCryptHKDF added for fast, cryptographically secure random number generation
  82   that won't deplete openssl's entropy pool.
  83 * ResourceLoader: File modules can now provide a skip function that uses an
  84   inline feature test to bypass loading of the module.
  85 * (bug 20210) Special pages may now provide autocompletion of their subpage
  86   names in search suggestions. Right now the only useful implementation is in
  87   Special:Log, but more are to come.
  88 * Special:MostLinkedTemplates is no longer limited to transclusions from the
  89   Template namespace.
  90 * Skins can now use 'remoteSkinPath' when defining ResourceLoader modules.
  91   This works the same as 'remoteExtPath' but is relative to the skins/ folder
  92   instead of the extensions/ folder.
  93 * Added the json2.js polyfill for the ES5 JSON.stringify and JSON.parse methods.
  94   Exposed as module "json" with a skip function to optimise loading.
  95 * Extensions and skins may now use 'namemsg' in $wgExtensionCredits in addition
  96   to 'name', to allow for the name to be localizable. 'name' should still be
  97   specified for backwards-compatibility and to define the path Special:Version
  98   uses to find extension license information.
  99 * Browser tests are now included to verify basic wiki functionality in developer
 100   environments. For details on running tests, see tests/browser/README.mediawiki.
 101 * Upgrade jStorage to v0.4.10.
 102 * {{!}} is now a magic word that produces the | character. This removes the need
 103   for Template:! for purposes such as passing pipes inside of parameters.
 104 * (bug 20790) The block log snippet on Special:Contributions and while
 105   editing user and user talk pages now works for IP range blocks.
 106 * (bug 9360) Added ability to change the page language for MediaWiki pages using
 107   Special:PageLanguage. All pages are set to wiki language by default.
 108   The feature needs to be enabled with $wgPageLanguageUseDB=true and
 109   permission needs to be set for 'pagelang'.
 110 * Upgrade Moment.js to v2.7.0.
 111 * (bug 67042) Added support for the HTML5 <rtc> tag for East Asian typography.
 112
 113 === Bug fixes in 1.24 ===
 114 * (bug 49116) Footer copyright notice is now always displayed in user language
 115   rather than content language (same as copyright notice for editing interface).
 116 * (bug 62258) A bug was fixed in File::getUnscaledThumb when a height
 117   restriction was present in the parameters. Images with both the "frame"
 118   option and a size specification set will now always ignore the provided
 119   size and display an unscaled image, as the documentation has always
 120   claimed it would.
 121 * (bug 39035) Improved Vector skin performance by removing collapsibleNav,
 122   which used to collapse some sidebar elements by default.
 123   This removes -list id suffixes like p-lang-list: instead of using things like
 124   #p-lang-list, you can do #p-lang .body ul.
 125 * (bug 890) Links in Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist no longer
 126   follow redirects to their target pages.
 127 * Parser now dies early if called recursively, instead of producing subtle bugs.
 128 * (bug 14323) Redirect pages, when viewed with redirect=no, no longer hide the
 129   remaining page content.
 130 * (bug 52587) Maintenance script deleteBatch.php no longer follows redirects
 131   in the file namespace and delete the file on the target page. It will still
 132   however delete the redirect page.
 133 * (bug 22683) {{msgnw:}} and other uses of PPFrame::RECOVER_ORIG will correctly
 134   recover the original code of extension tags.
 135 * (bug 65757) MSSQL: Update script drops unnamed constraints to be prepared
 136   for future updates. Because it's doing so heuristically, it may fail or drop
 137   wrong constraints.
 138
 139 === Web API changes in 1.24 ===
 140 * action=parse API now supports prop=modules, which provides the list of
 141   ResourceLoader modules that should be used to enhance the parsed content.
 142 * action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap returns a new "protorel"
 143   field which is true iff protocol-relative urls can be used to access
 144   a particular interwiki map entry.
 145 * ApiQueryLogEvents now provides logpage, which is the page ID from the
 146   logging table, if ids are requested and the user has the permissions.
 147 * action=edit now requires that appendtext, prependtext, or section=new be used
 148   when using the 'redirect' parameter, to prevent clients accidentally
 149   overwriting the target page with the content of the redirect.
 150 * action=logevents will now return an error if both letitle and leprefix are
 151   specified.
 152 * action=logevents has a new parameter, lenamespace, to allow filtering by
 153   namespace.
 154 * action=expandtemplates has a new parameter, prop, and a new output format.
 155   The old format is still used if prop isn't provided, but this is deprecated.
 156 * meta=userinfo can now return the count of unread pages on the watchlist.
 157 * list=watchlist can now filter by unread status.
 158 * The deprecated action=parse&prop=languageshtml has been removed.
 159 * (bug 48071) action=setnotificationtimestamp no longer throws PHP or database
 160   errors when no pages are given.
 161 * (bug 60734) Actions that use ApiPageSet (e.g. purge, watch,
 162   setnotificationtimestamp) will now include continuation information when
 163   using a generator.
 164
 165 === Languages updated in 1.24 ===
 166
 167 MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated
 168 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 169 changes to languages because of Bugzilla reports.
 170
 171 === Other changes in 1.24 ===
 172 * The deprecated jquery.delayedBind ResourceLoader module was removed.
 173 * The deprecated function mw.util.toggleToc was removed.
 174 * The Special:Search hooks SpecialSearchGo and SpecialSearchResultsAppend
 175   were removed as they were unused.
 176 * (bug 65477) User::pingLimiter() now has an additional profile point varying
 177   by action being used.
 178 * mediawiki.util.$content no longer supports old versions of the Vector,
 179   Monobook, Modern and CologneBlue skins that don't yet implement the "mw-body"
 180   and/or "mw-body-primary" class name in their html.
 181 * Added pp_sortkey column to page_props table, so pages can be efficiently
 182   queried and sorted by property value (bug 58032).
 183   See $wgPagePropsHaveSortkey if you want to postpone the schema change.
 184 * BREAKING CHANGE: The Modern and Cologne Blue skins were moved out of MediaWiki
 185   core to their own respective repositories. See also
 186   https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Modern and
 187   https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:CologneBlue.
 188 * BREAKING CHANGE: Skins built for MediaWiki 1.15 and earlier that do not use
 189   the "headelement" template key are no longer supported. Setting
 190   $useHeadElement = false; is no longer supported and will not cause old keys
 191   like "headlinks", "skinnameclass", etc. to be defined.
 192 * The deprecated 'SpecialVersionExtensionTypes' hook was removed.
 193 * (bug 63891) Add 'X-Robots-Tag: noindex' header in action=render pages.
 194 * SpecialPage no longer supports the syntax for invoking wfSpecial*() functions.
 195   Special pages should subclass SpecialPage and implement the execute() method.
 196 * (bug 63755) The deprecated constants RC_MOVE and RC_MOVE_OVER_REDIRECT were
 197   removed.
 198 * Special:MostLinkedTemplates has been renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages.
 199 * The skin autodiscovery mechanism has been deprecated and will be removed in
 200   MediaWiki 1.25. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skin_autodiscovery
 201   for migration guide for creators and users of custom skins that relied on it.
 202 * ResourceLoaderFileModule#getAllStyleFiles now returns all style files and all
 203   skin style files used by the module.
 204 * Removed getLang() from IContextSource and subclasses. (deprecated since 1.19)
 205 * Removed setLang() from subclasses of IContextSource. (deprecated since 1.19)
 206 * Removed WebRequest::escapeAppendQuery(). (deprecated since 1.20)
 207 * Removed info(), purge(), revert() and rollback() from the Article class; they
 208   have since become subclasses of the Action class. (deprecated since 1.19)
 209 * SearchEngineReplacePrefixesComplete hook was removed.
 210 * The "jquery.json" module has been deprecated. Use the "json" module instead.
 211 * Removed HTMLForm::addJS(). (deprecated since 1.18)
 212 * Removed LogEventsList::showHeader(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 213 * Removed ImageGalleryBase::useSkin(). (deprecated since 1.18)
 214 * Removed DatabaseMysqlBase::getLagFromProcesslist(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 215 * Removed LoadBalancer::closeConnecton(). (deprecated since 1.18)
 216 * Removed ApiBase::createContext(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 217 * BREAKING CHANGE: The undocumented Special{$this->getName()}BeforeFormDisplay
 218   set of hooks has been removed and replaced by a single new hook
 219   SpecialPageBeforeFormDisplay.
 220 * (bug 65781) Removed block warning on included {{Special:Contributions}}
 221 * Removed Skin::makeGlobalVariablesScript. (deprecated since 1.19)
 222 * Removed MWNamespace::isMain(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 223 * Removed Preferences::loadOldSearchNs(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 224 * Removed OutputPage::getStatusMessage(). (deprecated since 1.18)
 225 * Removed OutputPage::isUserJsAllowed(). (deprecated since 1.18)
 226 * Removed Title::updateTitleProtection(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 227 * Removed ParserOptions::setSkin(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 228 * Removed Title::escapeCanonicalURL(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 229 * Removed Title::escapeLocalURL(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 230 * Removed Title::escapeFullURL(). (deprecated since 1.19)
 231
 232 ==== Renamed classes ====
 233 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Expression to CLDRPluralRuleConverterExpression
 234 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Fragment to CLDRPluralRuleConverterFragment
 235 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Operator to CLDRPluralRuleConverterOperator
 236 * CLDRPluralRuleEvaluator_Range to CLDRPluralRuleEvaluatorRange
 237 * CSSJanus_Tokenizer to CSSJanusTokenizer
 238 * MediaWiki_I18N to MediaWikiI18N
 239 * Parser_DiffTest to ParserDiffTest
 240 * RevDel_ArchiveItem to RevDelArchiveItem
 241 * RevDel_ArchiveList to RevDelArchiveList
 242 * RevDel_ArchivedFileItem to RevDelArchivedFileItem
 243 * RevDel_ArchivedFileList to RevDelArchivedFileList
 244 * RevDel_ArchivedRevisionItem to RevDelArchivedRevisionItem
 245 * RevDel_FileItem to RevDelFileItem
 246 * RevDel_FileList to RevDelFileList
 247 * RevDel_Item to RevDelItem
 248 * RevDel_List to RevDelList
 249 * RevDel_LogItem to RevDelLogItem
 250 * RevDel_LogList to RevDelLogList
 251 * RevDel_RevisionItem to RevDelRevisionItem
 252 * RevDel_RevisionList to RevDelRevisionList
 253 * WebInstaller_Complete to WebInstallerComplete
 254 * WebInstaller_Copying to WebInstallerCopying
 255 * WebInstaller_DBConnect to WebInstallerDBConnect
 256 * WebInstaller_DBSettings to WebInstallerDBSettings
 257 * WebInstaller_Document to WebInstallerDocument
 258 * WebInstaller_ExistingWiki to WebInstallerExistingWiki
 259 * WebInstaller_Install to WebInstallerInstall
 260 * WebInstaller_Language to WebInstallerLanguage
 261 * WebInstaller_Name to WebInstallerName
 262 * WebInstaller_Options to WebInstallerOptions
 263 * WebInstaller_Readme to WebInstallerReadme
 264 * WebInstaller_ReleaseNotes to WebInstallerReleaseNotes
 265 * WebInstaller_Restart to WebInstallerRestart
 266 * WebInstaller_Upgrade to WebInstallerUpgrade
 267 * WebInstaller_UpgradeDoc to WebInstallerUpgradeDoc
 268 * WebInstaller_Welcome to WebInstallerWelcome
 269
 270 ==== Removed classes ====
 271 * IPBlockForm - Use SpecialBlock directly
 272 * WatchlistEditor - Use SpecialEditWatchlist directly
 273 * FormatExif - Use FormatMetadata directly
 274
 275 == Compatibility ==
 276
 277 MediaWiki 1.24 requires PHP 5.3.2 or later.
 278
 279 MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but
 280 support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for
 281 Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.
 282
 283 The supported versions are:
 284
 285 * MySQL 5.0.2 or later
 286 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
 287 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
 288 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 289 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)
 290
 291 == Upgrading ==
 292
 293 1.24 has several database changes since 1.23, and will not work without schema
 294 updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision
 295 table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site,
 296 many hours on a large site).
 297
 298 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons
 299 repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise
 300 due to database schema changes.
 301
 302 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 303 new database fields are filled with data.
 304
 305 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to
 306 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed
 307 with MediaWiki 1.21.
 308
 309 Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 310
 311 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 312
 313 For notes on 1.23.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 314
 315 == Online documentation ==
 316
 317 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on
 318 MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except
 319 for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
 320
 321         https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 322
 323 == Mailing list ==
 324
 325 A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
 326
 327         https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 328
 329 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 330
 331         https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 332
 333 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 334 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 335
 336 == IRC help ==
 337
 338 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.