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 1.18 ==
   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 1.18 ===
  22 * The WantedPages::getSQL hook has been removed and replaced with
  23   WantedPages::getQueryInfo . This may break older extensions.
  24 * $wgUseCombinedLoginLink controls whether to output a combined
  25   login / create account link in the personal bar, or to output separate login
  26   and create account links
  27 * Skin names are no longer created based on a ucfirst version of the key in
  28   $wgValidSkinNames but now the value. This means for
  29   $wgValidSkinNames["monobook"] = "MonoBook"; the skin loader will no longer try
  30   loading SkinMonobook and will instead load SkinMonoBook.
  31 * The parser now attempts to output markers for editsection tokens and defer the
  32   rendering of them so skin and language specific markup does not need to be
  33   saved inside the parser cache note that this changes the cache key making all
  34   old entries in the parser cache invalid you can set $wgUseEditSectionTokens to
  35   false to disable this and keep your old parser cache entries.
  36   Note that this feature should reduce parser cache fragmentation when enabled.
  37 * $wgMaxUploadSize may now be set to an array to specify the upload size limit
  38   per upload type.
  39 * $wgAPICacheHelp added in 1.16 is now removed. To disable API help caching, set
  40   $wgAPICacheHelpTimeout = 0;
  41 * OutputPage::isUserJsAllowed() no longer returns false when scripts are allowed
  42   by the page, but $wgAllowUserJs is set to false.
  43 * Pure "Skin" class based custom skins are no longer supported, all custom skins
  44   should be put together using SkinTemplate and BaseTemplate or QuickTemplate.
  45 * The transliteration for passwords in case they were migrated from an old Latin-1
  46   install (previous to MediaWiki 1.5) is now only done for wikis with
  47   $wgLegacyEncoding set.
  48
  49 === New features in 1.18 ===
  50 * Added a special page, disabled by default, that allows users with the
  51   'disableaccount' privilege to permanently deactivate user accounts.
  52 * (bug 8130) Query pages should limit to content namespaces, not just main
  53   namespace
  54 * Search suggestions (other than in the Vector skin) will now use the HTML5
  55   datalist feature where supported, currently only Firefox 4.
  56 * Special:Contribs now redirects to Special:Contributions
  57 * (bug 6672) Images are now autorotated according to their EXIF orientation.
  58   This only affects thumbnails; the source remains unrotated.
  59 * (bug 25708) Update case mappings and normalization to Unicode 6.0.0
  60 * New hook ArticlePrepareTextForEdit added, called when preparing text to be
  61   saved.
  62 * New parser option PreSaveTransform added, allows the pre-save transformation
  63   to be selectively disabled.
  64 * Alternative to $wgHooks implemented, using the new Hooks class.
  65 * Add width parameter to Special:Filepath to allow getting the file path of a
  66   thumbnail.
  67 * (bug 26870) Add size to {{filepath:}}
  68 * Upload warnings now show a thumbnail of the uploaded file
  69 * Introduced the edittools-upload message, which will be inserted under the
  70   upload form instead of edittools if available
  71 * (bug 26285) Extensions will be automatically generated on upload if the user
  72   specified a filename without extension.
  73 * (bug 26851) Special:UserRights now allows to prefill the reason field
  74 * New maintenance script to fix double redirects
  75   (maintenance/fixDoubleRedirects.php)
  76 * (bug 23315) New body classes to allow easier styling of special pages
  77 * (bug 27159) Make email confirmation code expiration time configurable
  78 * CSS/JS for each user group is imported from MediaWiki:Sysop.js,
  79   MediaWiki:Autoconfirmed.css, etc.
  80 * (bug 24230) Uploads of ZIP types, such as MS Office or OpenOffice can now be
  81   safely enabled. A ZIP file reader was added which can scan a ZIP file for
  82   potentially dangerous Java applets. This allows applets to be blocked
  83   specifically, rather than all ZIP files being blocked.
  84
  85 === Bug fixes in 1.18 ===
  86 * (bug 23119) WikiError class and subclasses are now marked as deprecated
  87 * (bug 10871) Javascript and CSS pages in MediaWiki namespace are no longer
  88   treated as wikitext on preview.
  89 * (bug 22753) Output from update.php is more clear when things changed, entries
  90   indicating nothing changed are now all prefixed by "..."
  91 * Page existence is now not revealed (in the colour of the tabs) to users who
  92   cannot read the page in question.
  93 * (bug 19006) {{REVISIONUSER}} no longer acts like {{CURRENTUSER}} in some cases
  94 * (bug 16019) $wgArticlePath = "/$1" no longer breaks API edit/watch actions
  95 * (bug 18372) File types blacklisted by $wgFileBlacklist will no longer be shown
  96   as "Permitted file types" on the upload form
  97 * (bug 26379) importImages.php gives more descriptive error message on failure.
  98 * (bug 26410) + signs are no longer treated as spaces in internal links if
  99   link has a % sign in it.
 100 * (bug 26412) Search results headers no longer show a bogus edit link.
 101 * (bug 26540) Fixed wrong call to applyPatch in MysqlUpdater
 102 * (bug 26574) Added 'upload' to $wgRestrictionTypes, allowing upload protected
 103   pages to be queried via the API and Special:ProtectedPages, and allowing
 104   disabling upload protection by removing it from $wgRestrictionTypes.
 105 * If an edit summary exceeds 250 bytes and is truncated, add an ellipse
 106 * (bug 26638) Database error pages display correctly in RTL languages
 107 * (bug 26187) Confirmrecreate no longer parses the edit summary
 108 * (bug 25506) Exception is thrown if OutputPage::parse is called inside a tag
 109   hook, which would reset parser state
 110 * (bug 26208) Mark directionality of some interlanguage links
 111 * (bug 26034) Make the "View / Read" tab in content_navigation style tabs remain
 112   selected when the action is "purge".
 113 * (bug 14267) Support a MediaWiki:Mainpage-nstab override for the subject
 114   namespace tab on the mainpage of a wiki.
 115 * (bug 10158) Do not mention allowing others to contact you when the feature
 116   is disabled ($wgEnableUserEmail=false)
 117 * (bug 26733) Wrap initial table creation in transaction
 118 * (bug 26729) Category pages should return 404 if they do not exist and have no
 119   members.
 120 * (bug 2585) Image pages should send 404 if no image, no shared image and no
 121   description page.
 122 * Custom editintro's using the editintro url parameter will no longer show
 123   <noinclude> sections on pages they are included on.
 124 * (bug 26449) Keep underlines from headings outside of tables and thumbs by
 125   adding overflow:hidden to h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 (also fixes editsection bunching).
 126 * (bug 26708) Remove background-color:white from tables in Monobook and Vector.
 127 * (bug 26781) {{PAGENAME}} and related parser functions escape their output
 128   better.
 129 * (bug 26716) Provide link to instructions for external editor related
 130   preferences and add a comment to the ini control file explaining what is
 131   going on.
 132 * Trying to upload a file with no extension or with a disallowed MIME type now
 133   gives the right message instead of complaining about a MIME/extension mismatch
 134 * (bug 26809) Uploading files with multiple extensions where one of the
 135   extensions is blacklisted now gives the proper extension in the error message.
 136 * (bug 26961) Hide anon edits in watchlist preference now actually works.
 137 * (bug 19751) Filesystem is now checked during image undeletion
 138 * Send last modified headers for Special:Recentchanges when RC patrol is
 139   enabled, but user cannot see rc patrol links.
 140 * (bug 26548) ForeignAPIRepo (InstantCommons) now works with PDF files
 141   and other multi-paged file formats.
 142 * Files with a mime type that does not match the extension are now properly
 143   thumbnailed
 144 * (bug 27201) Special:WhatLinksHere output no longer contains duplicate IDs
 145 * (bug 15905) Nostalgia skin could become more usable by including a Talk:
 146   link at the top of the page
 147 * (bug 27560) Search queries no longer fail in walloon language
 148 * (bug 27679) Broken embedded files with special characters are no longer
 149   double HTML escaped
 150 * (bug 27700) The upload protection can now also be set for files that do not
 151   exist.
 152
 153
 154 === API changes in 1.18 ===
 155 * (bug 26339) Throw warning when truncating an overlarge API result
 156 * (bug 14869) Add API module for accessing QueryPage-based special pages
 157 * (bug 14020) API for Special:Unwatchedpages
 158 * (bug 24287) Wrap API Help output at 100 characters
 159 * Add a realname uiprop option to query=userinfo so a user's realname can be
 160   extracted
 161 * Add a &watchuser option to ApiBlock
 162 * (bug 26541) Generator-ise ApiQueryRecentChanges
 163 * action=parse now correctly returns an error for nonexistent pages
 164 * (bug 25767) Add userrights properties to allusers and users query lists
 165 * (bug 26558) list=allusers auprop=groups does not list groups a user is
 166   automatically a member of
 167 * (bug 26559) list=allusers auprop=rights does not match
 168   list=users usprop=rights
 169 * (bug 26560) On allusers if limit < total number of users, last user gets
 170   duplicate
 171 * (bug 25135) add "normalized" to action=parse
 172 * (bug 26460) Add support for listing category members by category pageid
 173 * (bug 26482) add a imimages param to prop=images
 174 * (bug 26498) allow LinksUpdate with API
 175 * (bug 26485) add a elextlinks param to prop=extlinks
 176 * (bug 26483) add a iwtitles param to prop=iwlinks
 177 * (bug 26484) add a lltitles param to prop=langlinks
 178 * (bug 26480) add a pppageprops param to prop=pageprops
 179 * (bug 26650) Remove $wgAPICacheHelp in favour of $wgAPICacheHelpTimeout
 180 * (bug 24650) Fix API to work with categorylinks changes
 181 * Expose list of skins in meta=siteinfo
 182 * (bug 26548) Add iiurlparam param to query=imageinfo and query=stashimageinfo
 183 * (bug 27205) aiprop=metadata and aiprop=parsedcomment need help text
 184 * Add a amtitle param to meta=allmessages
 185 * (bug 25832) query=allimages now outputs ns/title as well
 186 * (bug 27199) Thumbnail urls can be fetched for old files as well
 187 * (bug 27376) when using ApiBase::PARAM_TYPE => 'integer' without a min or
 188   max value, api doesn't validate the input is actually an integer
 189 * (bug 27479) API error when using both prop=pageprops and
 190   prop=info&inprop=displaytitle
 191 * (bug 27554) Update api information text to reflect change in bug 26125
 192 * (bug 27611) list=blocks: Use ipb_by_text instead of join with user table
 193 * (bug 27616) Add userid of blocked user and blocker to list=blocks
 194 * (bug 27688) Simplify queries to list user block information
 195 * (bug 27708) list=users does not have a property to return user id
 196 * (bug 27715) imageinfo didn't respect revdelete
 197
 198 === Languages updated in 1.18 ===
 199
 200 MediaWiki supports over 330 languages. Many localisations are updated
 201 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
 202 changes to languages because of Bugzilla reports.
 203
 204 * (bug 17160) Gender specific display text for User namespace
 205 * Link trail added for sl and sh
 206 * (bug 27633) Add characters to linkTrail for Potuguese (pt and pt-br)
 207 * (bug 27426) Set $namespaceGenderAliases for Arabic (ar)
 208 * (bug 27385) Set Polish $namespaceGenderAliases
 209 * (bug 27681) Set $namespaceGenderAliases for Portuguese (pt and pt-br)
 210
 211 == Compatibility ==
 212
 213 MediaWiki 1.18 requires PHP 5.1 (5.2 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer
 214 supported.
 215
 216 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 217 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 218
 219
 220 == Upgrading ==
 221
 222 1.18 has several database changes since 1.17, and will not work without schema
 223 updates.
 224
 225 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons reposito-
 226 ry, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to
 227 database schema changes.
 228
 229 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 230 new database fields are filled with data.
 231
 232 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 233 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 234 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 235
 236 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 237
 238
 239 === Caveats ===
 240
 241 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 242 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 243 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 244 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 245 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 246
 247 For notes on 1.17.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 248
 249
 250 === Online documentation ===
 251
 252 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 253 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 254 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 255 the public domain) :
 256
 257         http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 258
 259
 260 === Mailing list ===
 261
 262 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 263 wikitech-l list:
 264
 265         http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 266
 267 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 268
 269         http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 270
 271 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 272 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 273
 274
 275 === IRC help ===
 276
 277 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net