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  25 * MediaWiki now checks if serialized files are out of date. New configuration
  26   variable $wgCheckSerialized can be set to false to enable old behavior (i.e.
  27   to not check and assume they are always up to date)
  28
  29 === New features in 1.12 ===
  30 * (bug 10735) Add a warning for non-descriptive filenames at Special:Upload
  31 * Add {{filepath:}} parser function to get full path to an uploaded file,
  32   complementing {{fullurl:}} for pages.
  33 * (bug 11136) If using Postgres, search path is explicitly set if wgDBmwschema
  34   is not set to 'mediawiki', allowing multiple mediawiki instances per user.
  35 * (bug 11151) Add descriptive <title> to revision history page
  36 * (bug 5412) Add feed links for the site to all pages
  37 * (bug 11353) Add ability to retrieve raw section content via action=raw
  38 * (bug 6909) Show relevant deletion log lines when uploading a previously
  39   deleted file
  40 * On SkinTemplate based skins (like MonoBook), omit confusing "edit"/"view
  41   source" tab entirely if the page doesn't exist and the user isn't allowed to
  42   create it
  43 * Clarify instructions given when an exception is thrown
  44 * AuthPlugin added strictUserAuth() method to allow per-user override
  45   of the strict() authentication behavior.
  46 * (bug 7872) Deleted revisions can now be viewed as diffs showing changes
  47   against the previous revision, whether currently deleted or live.
  48 * Added tooltips for the "Go" and "Search" buttons
  49 * (bug 11649) Show input form when Special:Whatlinkshere has no parameters
  50 * isValidEmailAddr hook added to User method of that name, to allow, e.g., re-
  51   stricting e-mail addresses to a specific domain
  52 * Removed "Clear" link in watchlist editor tools, as people were afraid to
  53   click it. Existing clear links will fall back to the raw editor, which is
  54   very easy to clear your watchlist with.
  55 * (bug 1405) Add wgUseNPPatrol option to control patroling for new articles
  56   on Special:Newpages
  57 * LogLine hook added to allow formatting custom entries in Special:Log.
  58 * Support for Iranian calendar
  59 * (bug 1401) Allow hiding logged-in users, bots and patrolled pages on
  60   Special:Newpages
  61 * ChangesListInsertArticleLink hook added for adding extra article info to RC.
  62 * MediaWikiPerformAction hook added for diverting control after the main
  63   globals have been set up but before any actions have been taken.
  64 * BeforeWatchlist hook added for filtering or replacing watchlist.
  65 * SkinTemplateTabAction hook added for altering the properties of tab links.
  66 * OutputPage::getRedirect public method added.
  67 * (bug 11848) Allow URL parameters 'editintro' and 'preload' in Special:Mypage
  68   and Special:Mytalk
  69 * Add ot=raw to Special:Allmessages
  70 * Support for Hebrew calendar
  71 * Support for Hebrew numerals in dates and times
  72 * (bug 11315) Signatures can be configured in [[MediaWiki:Signature]] and
  73   [[MediaWiki:Signature-anon]]
  74 * Signatures for anonymous users link to Special:Contributions page rather than
  75   user page
  76 * Added --override switch for disabled pages in updateSpecialPages.php
  77 * Provide a unique message (ipb_blocked_as_range) if unblock of a single IP
  78   fails
  79   because it is part of a blocked range.
  80 * (bug 3973) Use a separate message for the email content when an account is
  81   created by another user
  82 * dumpTextPass.php can spawn fetchText.php as a subprocess, which should restart
  83   cleanly if database connections fail unpleasantly.
  84 * (bug 12028) Add Special:Listbots as shortcut for Special:Listusers/bot
  85 * (bug 9633) Add a predefined list of delete reasons to the deletion form
  86 * Show a warning message when creating/editing a user (talk) page but the user
  87   does not exists
  88 * (bug 8396) Ignore out-of-date serialised message caches
  89
  90 === Bug fixes in 1.12 ===
  91
  92 * Subpages are now indexed for searching properly when using PostgreSQL
  93 * (bug 3846) Suppress warnings from, e.g. open_basedir when scanning for
  94   ImageMagick, diff3 et al. during installation [patch by Jan Reininghaus]
  95 * (bug 7027) Shift handling of deletion permissions-checking to
  96   getUserPermissionsErrors.
  97 * Login and signup forms are now more correct for right-to-left languages.
  98 * (bug 5387) Block log items on RecentChanges don't make use of possible
  99   translations
 100 * (bug 11211) Pass, as a parameter to the protectedpagetext interface
 101   message, the level of protection.
 102 * (bug 9611) Supply the blocker and reason for the cantcreateaccounttext
 103   message.
 104 * (bug 8759) Fixed bug where rollback was allowed on protected pages for wikis
 105   where rollback is given to non-sysops.
 106 * (bug 8834) Split off permission for editing user JavaScript and CSS from
 107   editinterface to a new permission key editusercssjs.
 108 * (bug 11266) Set fallback language for Fulfulde (ff) to French
 109 * (bug 11179) Include image version deletion comment in public log
 110 * Fixed notice when accessing special page without read permission and whitelist
 111   is not defined
 112 * (bug 9252) Fix for tidy funkiness when using editintro mode
 113 * (bug 4021) Fix for MySQL wildcard search
 114 * (bug 10699) Fix for MySQL phrase search
 115 * (bug 11321) Fix width of gallerybox when option "width=xxx" is used
 116 * (bug 7890) Special:BrokenRedirects links deleted redirects to a non-existent
 117   page
 118 * Fix initial statistics when installing: add correct values
 119 * (bug 11342) Fix several 'returnto' links in permissions/error pages which
 120   linked to the main page instead of targetted page
 121 * Strike the link to the redirect rather than using an asterisk in
 122   Special:Listredirects
 123 * (bug 11355) Fix false positives in Safe Mode and other config detection
 124   when boolean settings are disabled with 'Off' via php_admin_value/php_value
 125 * (bug 11292) Fixed unserialize errors with Postgres by creating special Blob
 126   object.
 127 * (bug 11363) Make all metadata fields bytea when using Postgres.
 128 * (bug 11331) Add buildConcat() and use CASE not IF for DB compatibility. Make
 129   oldimage cascade delete via image table for Postgres, change fa_storage_key
 130   TEXT.
 131 * (bug 11438) Live Preview chops returned text
 132 * Show the right message on account creation when the user is blocked
 133 * (bug 11450) Fix creation of objectcache table on upgrade
 134 * Fix namespace selection after submit of Special:Newpages
 135 * Make input form of Special:Newpages nicer for RTL wikis
 136 * (bug 11462) Fix typo in LanguageGetSpecialPageAliases hook name
 137 * (bug 11474) Fix unintentional fall-through in math error handling
 138 * (bug 11478) Fix undefined method call in file deletion interface
 139 * (bug 278) Search results no longer highlight incorrect partial word matches
 140 * Compatibility with incorrectly detected old-style DJVU mime types
 141 * (bug 11560) Fix broken HTML output from weird link nesting in edit comments.
 142   Nested links (as in image caption text) still don't work _right_ but they're
 143   less wrong
 144 * (bug 9718) Remove unnecessary css from main.css causing spacing issues on
 145   some browsers.
 146 * (bug 11574) Add an interface message loginstart, which, similarly to loginend,
 147   appears just before the login form. Patch by MinuteElectron.
 148 * Do not cache category pages if using 'from' or 'until'
 149 * Created new hook getUserPermissionsErrors, to go with userCan changes.
 150 * Diff pages did not properly display css/js pages.
 151 * (bug 11620) Add call to User::isValidEmailAddr during accout creation.
 152 * (bug 11629) If $wgEmailConfirmToEdit is true, require people to supply an
 153   email address when registering.
 154 * (bug 11612) Days to show in recent changes cannot be larger than 7
 155 * (bug 11131) Change filearchive width/height columns to int for Postgres
 156 * Support plural in undeleted{revisions,revisions-files,files}
 157 * (bug 11343) If the database is read-only, ensure that undelete fails.
 158 * (bug 11690) Show revert link for page moves in Special:Log to allowed users
 159   only
 160 * Initial-lowercase prefix checks in namespaceDupes.php now actually work.
 161 * Fix regression in LinkBatch.php breaking PHP 5.0
 162 * (bug 11452) wfMsgExt uses sometimes wrong language object for parsing magic
 163   words when called with options ''parsemag'' or ''content''.
 164 * (bug 11727) Support plural in 'historysize' message
 165 * (bug 11744) Incorrect return value from Title::getParentCategories()
 166 * (bug 11762) Fix native language name of Akan (ak)
 167 * (bug 11722) Fix inconsistent case in unprotect tabs
 168 * (bug 11795) Be more paranoid about confirming accept-encoding header is
 169   present
 170 * (bug 11809) Use formatNum() for more numbers
 171 * (bug 11818) Fix native language name of Inuktitut (iu)
 172 * Remove all commas when parsing float numbers in sorted tables
 173 * Limit text field of deletion, protection and user rights changes reasons to
 174   255 characters (already restricted in the database)
 175 * In the deletion default reasons, calculate how much text to get from the
 176   article text, rather than getting 150 characters (which may be too much)
 177 * Add two messages for Special:Blockme which were used but undefined
 178 * (bug 11921) Support plural in message number_of_watching_users_pageview
 179 * If an IP address is blocked as part of a rangeblock, attempting to unblock
 180   the single IP should not unblock the entire range.
 181 * (bug 6695) Fix native language name of Southern Sotho (Sesotho) (st)
 182 * Make action=render follow redirects by default
 183 * If restricted read access was enabled, whitelist didn't work with special
 184   pages which had spaces in theirs names
 185 * If restricted read access was enabled, requests for non-existing special pages
 186   threw an exception
 187 * Feeds for recent changes now provide correct URLs for the change, not just
 188   the page
 189 * Check for if IP is blocked as part of a range when unblocking (see above bug-
 190   fix) was faulty. Now fixed.
 191 * Fixed wpReason URL parameter to action=delete.
 192 * Do not force a password for account creation by email
 193 * Ensure that rate-limiting is applied to rollbacks.
 194 * Make a better rate-limiting error message (i.e. a normal MW error,
 195   rather than an "Internal Server Error").
 196 * Do not present an image bigger than the source when 'frameless' option is used
 197   (to be consistent with the 'thumb' option now)
 198 * Support {{PLURAL}} for import log
 199 * Make sure that the correct log entries are shown on Special:Userrights even
 200   for users with special characters in their names
 201 * The number of watching users in watchlists was always reported as 1
 202 * namespaceDupes.php no longer dies when coming across an illegal title
 203 * (bug 12143) Do not show a link to patrol new pages for non existent pages
 204 * (bug 12166) Fix XHTML validity for Special:Emailuser
 205
 206 == Parser changes in 1.12 ==
 207
 208 The parser pass order has changed from
 209
 210    * Extension tag strip and render
 211    * HTML normalisation and security
 212    * Template expansion
 213    * Main section...
 214
 215 to
 216
 217    * Template and extension tag parse to intermediate representation
 218    * Template expansion and extension rendering
 219    * HTML normalisation and security
 220    * Main section...
 221
 222 The main effect of this for the user is that the rules for uncovered syntax
 223 have changed.
 224
 225 Uncovered main-pass syntax, such as HTML tags, are now generally valid, whereas
 226 previously in some cases they were escaped. For example, you could have "<ta" in
 227 one template, and "ble>" in another template, and put them together to make a
 228 valid <table> tag. Previously the result would have been "&lt;table&gt;".
 229
 230 Uncovered preprocessor syntax is generally not recognised. For example, if you
 231 have "{{a" in Template:A and "b}}" in Template:B, then "{{a}}{{b}}" will be
 232 converted to a literal "{{ab}}" rather than the contents of Template:Ab. This
 233 was the case previously in HTML output mode, and is now uniformly the case in
 234 the other modes as well. HTML-style comments uncovered by template expansion
 235 will not be recognised by the preprocessor and hence will not prevent template
 236 expansion within them, but they will be stripped by the following HTML security
 237 pass.
 238
 239 The rules for template expansion during message transformation were
 240 counterintuitive, mostly accidental and buggy. There are a few small changes in
 241 this version: for example, templates with dynamic names, as in "{{ {{a}} }}",
 242 are fully expanded as they are in HTML mode, whereas previously only the inner
 243 template was expanded. I'd like to make some larger breaking changes to message
 244 transformation, after a review of typical use cases.
 245
 246 The header identification routines for section edit and for numbering section
 247 edit links have been merged. This removes a significant failure mode and fixes a
 248 whole category of bugs (tracked by bug #4899). Wikitext headings uncovered by
 249 template expansion or comment removal will still be rendered into a heading tag,
 250 and will get an entry in the TOC, but will not have a section edit link.
 251 HTML-style headings will also not have a section edit link. Valid wikitext
 252 headings present in the template source text will get a template section edit
 253 link. This is a major break from previous behaviour, but I believe the effects
 254 are almost entirely beneficial.
 255
 256 The main motivation for making these changes was performance. The new two-pass
 257 preprocessor can skip "dead branches" in template expansion, such as unfollowed
 258 #switch cases and unused defaults for template arguments. This provides a
 259 significant performance improvement in template-heavy test cases taken from
 260 Wikipedia. Parser function hooks can participate in this performance improvement
 261 by using the new SFH_OBJECT_ARGS flag during registration.
 262
 263 The pre-expand include size limit has been removed, since there's no efficient
 264 way to calculate such a figure, and it would now be meaningless for performance
 265 anyway. The "preprocessor node count" takes its place, with a generous default
 266 limit.
 267
 268 The context in which XML-style extension tags are called has changed, so
 269 extensions which make use of the parser state may need compatibility changes.
 270
 271 === API changes in 1.12 ===
 272
 273 Full API documentation is available at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API
 274
 275 * (bug 11275) Enable descending sort in categorymembers
 276 * (bug 11308) Allow the API to output the image metadata
 277 * (bug 11296) Temporary fix for escaping of ampersands inside links in
 278   pretty-printed
 279   help document.
 280 * (bug 11405) Expand templates implementation in the API
 281 * (bug 11218) Add option to feedwatchlist to display multiple revisions for each
 282   page.
 283 * (bug 11404) Provide name of exception caught in error code field of internal
 284   api error messages.
 285 * (bug 11534) rvendid doesn't work
 286 * Fixed rvlimit of the revisions query to only enforce the lower query limit if
 287   revision content is requested.
 288 * Include svn revision number (if install is checked-out from svn) in siteinfo
 289   query.
 290 * (bug 11173) Allow limited wikicode rendering via api.php
 291 * (bug 11572) API should provide interface for expanding templates
 292 * (bug 11569) Login should return the cookie prefix
 293 * (bug 11632) Breaking change: Specify the type of a change in the recentchanges
 294   list as 'edit', 'new', 'log' instead of 0, 1, 2, respectively.
 295 * Compatibility fix for PHP 5.0.x.
 296 * Add rctype parameter to list=recentchanges that filters by type
 297 * Add apprtype and apprlevel parameters to filter list=allpages by protection
 298   types and levels
 299 * Add apdir parameter to enable listing all pages from Z to A
 300 * (bug 11721) Use a different title for results than for the help page.
 301 * (bug 11562) Added a user_registration parameter/field to the list=allusers
 302   query.
 303 * (bug 11588) Preserve document structure for empty dataset in backlinks query.
 304 * Outputting list of all user preferences rather than having to request them by
 305   name
 306 * (bug 11206) api.php should honor maxlag
 307 * Added diff generation to prop=revisions
 308 * Added support for traditional, unified and array diffs to prop=revisions
 309 * Make prop=info check for restrictions in the old format too.
 310 * Add apihighlimits permission, default for sysops and bots
 311 * Add limit=max to use maximal limit
 312
 313 === Languages updated in 1.12 ===
 314
 315 * Afrikaans (af)
 316 * Akan (ak) (new)
 317 * Amharic (am) (new)
 318 * Aragonese (an)
 319 * Old English (ang) (new)
 320 * Arabic (ar)
 321 * Aramaic (arc)
 322 * Mapudungun (arn) (new)
 323 * Assamese (as)
 324 * Asturian (ast)
 325 * Aymara (ay)
 326 * Samogitian (bat-smg)
 327 * Boarisch (bar)
 328 * Bikol Central (bcl)
 329 * Belarusian Taraskievica orthography (be-tarask)
 330 * Bulgarian (bg)
 331 * Bislama (bi) (new)
 332 * Bamanankan (bm)
 333 * Bengali (bn)
 334 * Bishnupriya Manipuri (bpy)
 335 * Breton (br)
 336 * Buginese (bug) (new)
 337 * Catalan (ca)
 338 * Zamboangueño (cbk-zam) (new)
 339 * Min Dong (cdo) (new)
 340 * Chechen (ce)
 341 * Cebuano (ceb) (new)
 342 * Crimean Tatar (Cyrillic) (crh-cyrl) (new)
 343 * Crimean Tatar (Latin) (crh-latn) (new)
 344 * Czech (cs)
 345 * Cassubian (csb)
 346 * Old Church Slavonic (cu)
 347 * Welsh (cy)
 348 * Danish (da)
 349 * German (de)
 350 * Lower Sorbian (dsb) (new)
 351 * Divehi (dv)
 352 * Ewe (ee) (new)
 353 * Greek (el)
 354 * English (en)
 355 * Spanish (es)
 356 * Estonian (et)
 357 * Euskara (eu)
 358 * Extremaduran (ext)
 359 * Finnish (fi)
 360 * Persian (fa)
 361 * Fulah (ff)
 362 * Võro (fiu-vro)
 363 * Faroese (fo)
 364 * French (fr)
 365 * Cajun French (frc)
 366 * Franco-Provençal (frp)
 367 * Frisian (fy)
 368 * Irish (ga)
 369 * Gön-gnŷ (gan) (new)
 370 * Galician (gl)
 371 * Gilaki (glk) (new)
 372 * Ancient Greek (grc) (new)
 373 * Swiss German (gsw)
 374 * Hakka (hak)
 375 * Hebrew (he)
 376 * Croatian (hr)
 377 * Upper Sorbian (hsb)
 378 * Hungarian (hu)
 379 * Armenian (hy)
 380 * Interlingua (ia)
 381 * Indonesian (id)
 382 * Interlingue (ie) (new)
 383 * Ingush (inh) (new)
 384 * Ido (io) (new)
 385 * Icelandic (is)
 386 * Italian (it)
 387 * Japanese (ja)
 388 * Georgian (ka)
 389 * Kara-Kalpak (kaa)
 390 * Kabyle (kab)
 391 * Kazakh (kk)
 392 * Kannada (kn)
 393 * Korean (ko)
 394 * Kölsch (ksh)
 395 * Kurdish (Latin) (ku-latn)
 396 * Cornish (kw) (new)
 397 * Latin (la)
 398 * Luxembourgish (lb) (new)
 399 * Lak (lbe) (new)
 400 * Limbugian (li)
 401 * Lozi (loz) (new)
 402 * Lingala (ln)
 403 * Lithuanian (lt)
 404 * Malayalam (ml)
 405 * Macedonian (mk)
 406 * Malay (ms)
 407 * Erzya (myv) (new)
 408 * Nahuatl (nah)
 409 * Min-nan (nan)
 410 * Napolitan (nap)
 411 * Low Saxon (nds)
 412 * Dutch Low Saxon (nds-nl)
 413 * Newari (new) (new)
 414 * Dutch (nl)
 415 * Norwegian (no)
 416 * Novial (nov) (new)
 417 * Occitan (oc)
 418 * Deitsch (pdc) (new)
 419 * Polish (pl)
 420 * Piemontèis (pms)
 421 * Pontic (pnt) (new)
 422 * Pashto (ps)
 423 * Portugese (pt)
 424 * Quechua (qu)
 425 * Rhaeto-Romance (rm) (new)
 426 * Romanian (ro)
 427 * Russian (ru)
 428 * Sakha (sah)
 429 * Sardinian (sc)
 430 * Sicilian (scn)
 431 * Scots (sco) (new)
 432 * Sindhi (sd)
 433 * Sassarese (sdc) (new)
 434 * Seri (sei) (new)
 435 * Tachelhit (shi)
 436 * Slovak (sk)
 437 * Serbian (Cyrillic) (sr-ec)
 438 * Swati (ss) (new)
 439 * Saterland Frisian (stq) (new)
 440 * Sundanese (su)
 441 * Swedish (sv)
 442 * Tamil (ta)
 443 * Teluga (te)
 444 * Tetun (tet) (new)
 445 * Tajik (tg)
 446 * Tagalog (tl) (new)
 447 * Turkish (tr)
 448 * Tuvinian (tyv)
 449 * Uyghur (ug)
 450 * Uzbek (uz)
 451 * Venitian (vec)
 452 * Vietnamese (vi)
 453 * West Flemish (vls)
 454 * Volapük (vo)
 455 * Walloon (wa)
 456 * Wolof (wo)
 457 * Wu (wuu) (new)
 458 * Yiddish (yi)
 459 * Cantonese (yue)
 460 * Zhuang (za)
 461 * Zealandic (zea)
 462 * Old Chinese/Late Time Chinese (zh-classical)
 463 * Chinese (Simplified) (zh-hans)
 464 * Chinese (Traditional) (zh-hant)
 465
 466 == Compatibility ==
 467
 468 MediaWiki 1.12 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.
 469
 470 PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
 471 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
 472 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.
 473
 474 MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
 475 At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.
 476
 477
 478 == Upgrading ==
 479
 480 1.12 has several database changes since 1.11, and will not work without schema
 481 updates.
 482
 483 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
 484 new database fields are filled with data.
 485
 486 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
 487 changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
 488 break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
 489
 490 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
 491
 492
 493 === Caveats ===
 494
 495 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
 496 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
 497 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
 498 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
 499 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
 500
 501 For notes on 1.11.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
 502
 503
 504 === Online documentation ===
 505
 506 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 507 built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 508 License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in
 509 the public domain) :
 510
 511   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
 512
 513
 514 === Mailing list ===
 515
 516 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 517 wikitech-l list:
 518
 519   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 520
 521 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
 522
 523   http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
 524
 525 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
 526 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
 527
 528
 529 === IRC help ===
 530
 531 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net