path: root/RELEASE-NOTES

= MediaWiki release notes =

Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals
setting since version 1.2.0. If you have it on, turn it *off* if you can.

== MediaWiki 1.9 ==

January 10, 2007

This is the quarterly release snapshot for Winter 2007. While the code
has been running on Wikipedia for some time, installation and upgrade
bits may be less well tested. Bug fix releases may follow in the coming
days or weeks.


MediaWiki is now using a "continuous integration" development model with
quarterly snapshot releases. The latest development code is always kept
"ready to run", and in fact runs our own sites on Wikipedia.

Release branches will continue to receive security updates for about a year
from first release, but nonessential bugfixes and feature development happen
will be made on the development trunk and appear in the next quarterly release.

Those wishing to use the latest code instead of a branch release can obtain
it from source control: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN


== Security fixes ==

An XSS injection vulnerability was located in the AJAX support module,
affecting MediaWiki 1.6.x and up when the optional setting $wgUseAjax
is enabled.

There is no danger in the default configuration, with $wgUseAjax off.

If you are using an extension based on the optional Ajax module,
either disable it or upgrade to a version containing the fix:

* 1.9: fixed in 1.9.0rc2
* 1.8: fixed in 1.8.3
* 1.7: fixed in 1.7.2
* 1.6: fixed in 1.6.9


== Compatibility changes ==

=== Zend Optimizer ===

A bug in some versions of PHP 5 and Zend Optimizer which was triggered under
MediaWiki 1.8.x has been worked around by disabling some internal debugging
features when Zend Optimizer is loaded. This should solve some common
"blank page" problems.

=== PHP 5.0 64-bit ===

MediaWiki now checks for a condition where PHP 5.0.x corrupts array data
on 64-bit systems and warns you to upgrade PHP to solve the problem. This
bug causes Special: pages to fail on affected systems under MediaWiki 1.8
and higher, and subtler data corruption on earlier versions.

The only known workaround is to upgrade PHP to 5.1 or later, which you
probably should do anyway for security reasons!

=== MySQL 5 ===

MediaWiki should now install and run correctly on MySQL 5.0 and higher when
MySQL's "strict mode" is enabled. (This is now the default for many Windows
installations, though it seems to remain off by default on Unix.)

This fixes errors about "cannot default default value for BLOB/TEXT fields".

=== ImageMagick ===

Note that ImageMagick older than 6.x may no longer work for image resizing
due to use of the -thumbnail option.


== Behavior changes ==

=== Localized special pages ===

The names of Special: pages can now be localized, so links and URLs to them
are more legible in languages that aren't English.

Not all languages have included localized names yet.

=== E-mail password ===

Users are now required to set a new password for themselves when they first
log in with a newly generated e-mailed password.

Requesting passwords frequently is prevented to reduce abusive mailbombing.

=== Undo revision ===

An "undo" link now appears in diff view for easier reverting of older edits.
When GNU diff3 is available for edit conflict merging, this can make it much
easier to "undo" the changes of an older edit when there are surrounding
changes elsewhere in the page.

The changes must be manually reviewed and approved, as with conventional
full-revision reverts.

=== Blocking ===

User blocks can be set to disable the automatic blocking of IP addresses the
account logs in with.


== Database changes ==

* new 'redirect' table stores data on page redirects
* new 'querycachetwo' table used for some cached special pages
* 'ipblocks' table adds 'ipb_enable_autoblock'
* 'recentchanges' table adds 'rc_old_len', 'rc_new_len' for size tracking
* 'user' table has added 'user_newpass_time' and 'user_editcount' fields
* some indexes have been updated on 'recentchanges'


== Configuration changes ==

Several configuration options have changed since 1.8:

=== $wgEnableAPI ===

The experimental machine API interface is now enabled by default, read-only.
You can disable it by setting $wgEnableAPI = false; in LocalSettings.php.

=== $wgPathInfo ===

The use of PATH_INFO (the text after the script name in 'index.php/Blah')
is controlled by the $wgUsePathInfo setting. This is now explicitly disabled
for CGI, apache2filter, and ISAPI configurations of PHP, for more consistency
with the autodetection from the installer.

In some rarer configurations you may have to switch $wgUsePathInfo from false
to true or, perhaps, from true to false to make things work properly if bad
PATH_INFO data comes through the server.

The wiki now tries to detect this condition and should show you an error
message describing what to change instead of sending the browser into an
infinite redirect loop.

=== $wgScript and other path settings ===

The following configuration variables are now automatically set in Setup.php
if they are not overridden in LocalSettings.php:

from $wgScriptPath:
 + $wgScript
 |  \- $wgArticlePath
 + $wgRedirectScript
 + $wgStylePath
 + $wgUploadPath
    \- $wgLogo
     + $wgMathPath

from $IP:
 - $wgStyleDirectory
 + $wgUploadDirectory
   \- $wgMathDirectory
    + $wgTmpDirectory
    + $wgReadOnlyFile
    + $wgFileCacheDirectory

Newly generated configuration files will by default include only $wgScriptPath
(hardcoded from the installer) and $IP (detected at runtime).

Old configuration files which specify all these values explicitly should
continue to work just fine, but if you use the defaults you can remove them
to reduce clutter.

=== $wgGroupPermissions ===

The sysop group now holds the "autopatrol" and "ipblock-exempt" rights by
default.

"autopatrol" replaces the preference for marking ones own edits patrolled
by default; users holding this permission will automatically have their
edits patrolled, while others cannot mark their own edits as patrolled
even if they have patrolling rights.

"ipblock-exempt" excludes the user from IP blocks; accounts which are blocked
explicitly by name will still be blocked, however. This is given to sysops
to minimize annoyance from accidental "collateral damage"; remember that a
sysop will be able to lift the block if they desire.

The bot group now holds the "nominornewtalk" right. A user with this right
will not trigger new message notifications when making minor edits to user
talk pages. This is meant to minimize annoyance from maintenance bot
processes.

=== $wgUseWatchlistCache ===

Watchlist caching has been removed. The feature was not maintained, and has
been unnecessary since switching to the 'recentchanges' database table
reduced server pressure for Wikipedia's watchlists.

=== $wgBreakFrames ===

MediaWiki in the past attempted to detect when it was embedded in a frameset
and "break out" of it, assuming it to be hostile.

This behavior is now disabled by default, but can be reenabled by setting
$wgBreakFrames to true in LocalSettings.php.


== New settings ==

=== $wgVariantArticlePath ===

For languages with script variant support (Chinese, Serbian, and others),
it's possible to use alternate URL paths to select the variant for article
display, setting $wgVariantArticlePath.

Documentation for this setting would be useful.

=== $wgMaxMsgCacheEntrySize ===

The message cache can now skip items larger than a given size; this allows
it to better handle the primary caching case when large CSS and JS blobs are
present.

=== $wgStyleVersion ===

When making significant changes to skin stylesheets and JavaScript files,
you can append a string to this variable to tweak the generated URLs,
forcing newly rendered pages to bring in a fresh version despite server-
or browser-side caching.

Normally this will be set in the course of MediaWiki development, but
if doing development on a custom skin you may wish to poke it as well.

=== $wgRCShowChangedSize ===

Special:Recentchanges and Special:Watchlist now show the number of bytes
added or removed to an article to give an idea of the size of the edit.
This information was previously available only in the IRC update feeds.

To disable this site-wide, set $wgRCShowChangedSize to false.
(Individual users can suppress the data in custom CSS.)

Adjust $wgRCChangedSizeThreshold to trigger highlighting of particularly
large changes.

The formatting of the size figure can be adjusted through the
[[MediaWiki:Rc-change-size]] message.

=== $wgQueryCacheLimit ===

The number of rows stored for "expensive" special pages in miser mode
can now be adjusted up or down from the default 1000.

=== $wgDisableQueryPageUpdate ===

Individual "expensive" special pages can be skipped in processing by
updateSpecialPages if added to this list.

=== $wgSorbsUrl ===

The base hostname for the DNS-based proxy blacklist can now be overridden
when $wgEnableSorbs is set, to use a different blacklist instead of SORBS.
The blacklist would need to respond the same was as SORBS; any positive
response will be taken as a proxy.

=== $wgAjaxWatch ===

Experimental AJAX mode for the watch/unwatch tabs to execute inline.
Does not include the UI messages describing how to reach the watchlist,
so you may not want it on a general-audience site just yet.

=== $wgParserTestFiles ===

MediaWiki's parser test suite can now be expanded with additional test
files. Custom extensions can add their test files to this array, and
they will be run along with the main tests by maintenance/parserTests.php


== Changes since 1.8 ==

* (bug 8200) Make category lists sorted by name when using Postgres.
* (bug 7841) Support 'IGNORE' inserts for Postgres, fixes watchlist 
  adding problem.
* (bug 6835) Removing the includes/Parser.php::getTemplateArgs() function, 
  because it seems to be unused.
* (bug 7139) Increasing the visual width of the edit summary field on larger
  screen sizes, for the default monobook skin.
* Fix PHP notice and estimates for dumpBackup.php and friends
* Improved register_globals paranoia checks
* (bug 7545) Fix PHP version check on install
* Disable PHP exception backtrace printing unless $wgShowExceptionDetails
  is set. Backtraces may contain sensitive information in function call
  parameters.
* (bug 6164) Avoid smashing Cite state if message transformation triggers
  during bad image list check, by skipping message transformation.
  This isn't a good permanent fix.
* (bug 6918) Stopped borders and backgrounds from showing through floated
  tables in Monobook
* (bug 6868) Un-hardcode section edit link style
* (bug 3205) Stop right floats from stacking horizontally in non-Monobook skins
* Added global $wgStyleVersion to centralize bumping CSS and JS file versions
  for cache-friendly style and script updating
* (bug 7562) Fix non-ASCII namespaces on Windows/XAMPP servers
* Friendlier check for PHP 5 in command-line scripts; it's common for parallel
  PHP 4 and 5 installations to interfere on the command-line.
* Fix regression in autoconfirm permission check
* (bug 3015) Add CSS ids to subcategory and page sections on category pages
* (bug 7587) Fix erroneous id for specialpage tab, enabling informative popup
* (bug 7599) Fix thumbnail purging, PHP notices on HTCP image page purge
* (bug 7581) Update language name for cbk-zam
* (bug 7444) Update namespace translations for Telugu (te), kept old values as
  alias for compatibility
* (bug 4525) Move section links down visually to same level as headings
  (editsection links are now inside the heading elements)
* Workaround for http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=31892 , PATH_INFO and hence 
  URLs of the style /index.php/Main_Page were broken on some CGI installations.
* (bug 7623) Validate custom HTML id's correctly in Monobook interface
* (bug 2241) Fix collision of 'w' and 'd' accesskeys
* (bug 5795) CSS class added to body based on page name for page-specific
  styling
* (bug 6276) Stopped search field from getting too large in Cologne Blue
* (bug 7644) User creations that are aborted by hooks shouldn't be counted
  against account creations per day limit
* (bug 7636) Show Firefox 2 users correct accesskey prefix
* (bug 6427) Block blocked IPs from using the mail password function
  to allow blocking of flooders
* Include common.css from classic-style skins in main HTML with the bump URL
* (bug 7607) Add Karakalpak (kaa) to Names.php and stub message file for linktrail
* (bug 7582) Add 'tog-nolangconversion' to MessagesEn.php.
  This key is need for languages with variants (zh, sr, kk)
* (bug 7606) MediaWiki messages for "rss" and "atom" missing
* (bug 7609) Add some more '*-summary' messages to MessagesEn.php with empty
  strings to allow better localisation via Special:Allmessages. Mark this new
  messages as optional for localisation.
* Fix user_newpass upgrade for prefixed tables (reported by Fyren)
* (bug 7663) Include language variant switcher links on Nostalgia skin
* (bug 6531) Fix PHP fatal error on installation page with bad username input.
* (bug 6977) Remove 404 link for autogenerated database documentation.
* (bug 7369) Allow "Show Changes" without requiring edit token.
* (bug 7687) Fix movetalk box checks itself when confirming a delete and move.
* (bug 7684) Obey watchcreated preference for Special:Upload watch checkbox
* (bug 7686) Include id attribute on delete form confirmation button
* Allow compound interwiki prefixes in $wgImportSources
* (bug 7304) Added redirect table to store redirect targets.
* Added querycachetwo table (similar to querycache but has two titles)
* PageArchive can now return a Revision object for more convenient processing
  of deleted revision data
* Added 'UndeleteShowRevision' hook in Special:Undelete
* Error message on attempt to view invalid or missing deleted revisions
* Remove unsightly "_" from namespace in Special:Allpages, Special:Prefixindex
* (bug 3224) Allow minor edits by bots to skip new message notification on
  user talk pages. This can be disabled by adjusting the 'nominornewtalk'
  permission. Patch by Werdna.
* (bug 7741) MATH: fixed broken syntax of underbrace etc. Fixed arrays
* Fix purging for updated SVG files
* (bug 7745) Add id attribute to search button in Monobook
* (bug 7749) MATH: added some more LaTeX symbols, e.g. parallel, diamond, ast, ...
* (bug 7304) Added code in Article.php to keep redirect table up to date.
* Made special page names case-insensitive and localisable. Care has been taken 
  to maintain backwards compatibility.
* Used special page subpages in a few more places, instead of query parameters.
* (bug 7758) Added wrapper span to "templates used" explanation to allow CSS
  styling (class="mw-templatesUsedExplanation").
* Added {{#special:}} parser function, to give the local default title for 
  special pages
* (bug 7766) Remove redundant / from AJAX requests, can break some servers
* Add tab links from extensions to classic-based skins (SkinTemplateTab hook)
  Provides better cross-skin compatibility for extensions using the modern
  skin hooks, such as Oversight
* Moved variant language links on Cologne Blue and Nostalgia to before the
  login/logout link
* Fix for parser tests with MySQL 5 in strict mode
* Added block option "enable autoblocks"
* Amend Special:Ipblocklist to note when a block has autoblock DISABLED.
* (bug 7780) Fix regression in editing redirects
* Add whitespace above "templates included on this page" using CSS, not
  hardcoded line break.
* Remove entries from redirect table on article deletion
* (bug 7788) Force section headers in new section links for users who have
  'prompt for blank edit summaries' on.
* (bug 1133) Special:Emailuser: add an option to send yourself a copy of your mail.
* (bug 461) Allow "Categories:" link at bottom of pages to be customized via
  pagecategorieslink message.
* Sort the list of skins in "My Preferences" -> Skins by alphabetical order.
* (bug 7785) Postgres compatibility for timestamps in RC feeds
* (bug 7550) Normalize user parameter normally on Special:Log
* (bug 7294) Fix PATH search for diff3 on install
* Various fixes related to the blocking change re: autoblocks. On inserting
  an IP block, the ipb_enable_autoblock field is now automagically blanked,
  because it doesn't make any sense for an IP. Additionally, IP blocks
  without the ipb_enable_autoblock option no longer show up as "autoblock
  disabled" on Special:Ipblocklist.
* (bug 7774) MATH: aded more amstex functions
* (bug 1182) MATH: fixed inconsistent rendering of upper case Greek letters in TeX
* Fix regression in streaming page dump generation
* (bug 7801) Add support for parser function hooks in parser tests
* checkUsernames.php now uses wfDebugLog instead of hardcoded path to log
* (bug 7810) Update talk namespaces for Occitan
* Allow case-sensitive URLs to be used for uploading from URLs.
* (bug 1109) Correct fix for compressed 304 responses when additional output
  buffers have been installed within the compression handler
* (bug 7819) Move automatic redirect edit summary after pre-save transform
  to work properly with subst: fun
* (bug 7826) Fix typos in two English messages.
* (bug 5365) Stop users being prompted to enter an edit summary for null edits,
  if they have selected that option in preferences.
* (bug 5936) Show an 'm' to the left of the edit summary on diff pages for minor edits.
* (bug 7820) Improve error reporting for uploads via URL.
* (bug 5149) When autoblocks are enabled, retroactively apply an autoblock to the most
  recently used IP of a user when they are blocked.
* Add an index on (rc_user_text,rc_timestamp) on the recentchanges table. This will 
  make CheckUser.php and the new retroactive autoblock functionality faster.
* Fix regression in Special:Undelete for revisions deleted under MediaWiki 1.4
  with compression or legacy encoding
* (bug 6737) Fixes for MySQL 5 schema in strict mode
* Approximate height for client-side scaling fallback instead of passing -1
  into the HTML output.
* Make the DNSBL to check for proxy blocking configurable via $wgSorbsUrl
* Add experimental recording/reporting mode to parser tests runner, to
  compare changes against the previous run.
  Additional tables 'testrun' and 'testitem' are in maintenance/testRunner.sql,
  source this and pass --record option to parserTests.php
* Make the set of default parser test input files extensible via
  $wgParserTestFiles. This can now be appended to by extensions or local
  configuration files so that extension or custom tests can be automatically
  run along with the main batch.
* Run PHP install version checks on update.php so command-line updaters see
  new version requirements
* Do a check for the PHP 5.0.x 64-bit bug, since this is much more disruptive
  as of MW 1.8 than it used to be. Install or upgrade now aborts with a
  warning and a request to upgrade.
* (bug 6440) Updated indexes to improve backlinking queries (links, templates, images)
* Switched 'anon-only' block mode to default for IP blocks
* (bug 3687, 7892) Add distinct heading for media files in category display,
  with count.
* (bug 1578) Add different icons for external links to audio, video, or PDF in
  Monobook.
* Made autoblocks block account creation if the user block has that option enabled.
* Add auto-summaries to blankings and large removals without summaries.
* (bug 7811) Allow preview of edit summaries.
* (bug 6839) Wikibits.js minor changes to make JS-lint happier.
* (bug 7932) Make sure that edit toolbar clears floats so it appears correctly.
* (bug 6873) When viewing old revisions, add link to diff to current version.
* (bug 3315) Provide rollback link directly on history page.
* Replace 'old-revision-navigation' message with 'revision-info' and
  'revision-nav' messages, wrapped in divs with appropriate id's.
* (bug 4178) MediaWiki:Common.js will now be included for all users if
  $wgUseSiteJs is enabled, in addition to (if applicable) MediaWiki:Monobook.js
  and user JS subpages.
* (bug 7918) "Templates used on this page" changes during preview to reflect
  any added or removed templates, and works as expected for section edits.
* (bug 7919) "Templates used on this page" is now shown for read-only pages.
* (bug 7688) When viewing diff, section anchors in autosummary jump to section
  on current page instead of loading the latest version.
* (bug 7970) Use current connection explicitly on Database::getServerVersion
* (bug 2001) Tables with class="sortable" can now be dynamically sorted via
  JavaScript.
* Added autosummary for new pages with 500 or less characters, and refactor
   the autosummary code so it's all done in one function. doEdit is getting too
   big!
* (bug 7554) The correct MIME type for SVG images is now displayed on the
  image page (image/svg+xml, not image/svg).
* (bug 7883) Added autoblock whitelisting feature, using which specific ranges
   can be protected from autoblocking. These ranges are specified, in list format,
   in the autoblock_whitelist system message.
* Added placeholders for text injection by hooks to EditPage.php
* (bug 8009) Automatic edit summary for redirects is not filled for edits in existing pages
* Installer support for experimental MySQL 4.1/5.0 binary-safe schema
* Use INSERT IGNORE for db-based BagOStuff add/insert, for more memcache-like
  behavior when keys already exist on add (instead of dying with an error...)
* Add a hook 'UploadForm:initial' before the upload form is generated, and two
  member variable for text injection into the form, which can be filled by the hooks.
* (bug 6295) Add a "revision patching" functionality, where an edit can be undone
  (with a functionality similar to diff rev1 rev2 | patch -R rev3 -o rev3).
  This is triggered by including &undo=revid in an edit URL. A link to a URL
  that will undo a given edit is shown on NEW revision headers on diff pages.
  The link leads to a "Show Changes" page showing what will be done to undo the 
  edit.
* Fix display of link in "already rolled back" message for image/category pages
* (bug 6016) Left-aligned images should stack vertically, like right-aligned
  images, not horizontally.
* Patch from LeonWP: added UploadForm:BeforeProcessing hook in SpecialUpload.php
* Add AuthPluginSetup hook to override $wgAuth after configuration
* Fix regression in authentication hook auto-creation on login
* (bug 8110) Allow spaces in ISBNs
* (bug 8024) Introduce "send me copies of emails I send to others" preference
* Added 'EditPage::attemptSave' hook before an article is saved.
* (bug 8083) Applied patch for sk localisation
* Add a backslash character to the edit token, to prevent edits via certain
  broken proxies that mangle such characters in form submissions
* (bug 7461) Allow overwriting pages using importTextFile.php
* (bug 7946) importTextFile.php doesn't perform pre-save transform
* (bug 8117) {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} showed weird default if $wgLocalTZoffset set;
  now uses current time for previews and if timestamp can't be loaded from DB
* {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} now uses site local timezone instead of user timezone
  to ensure consistent behavior
* {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and friends should now work on non-MySQL backends
* (bug 7671) Observe canonical media namespace prefix in Linker::formatComment
* Added js variable wgCurRevisionId to the output
* (bug 8141) Cleanup of Parser::doTableStuff, patch by AzaTht
* (bug 8042) Make miser mode caching limits settable via $wgQueryCacheLimit
  instead of hardcoding to 1000
* Enable QueryPage classes to override list formatting
* (bug 5485) Show number of intervening revisions in diff view
* (bug 8100) Fix XHTML validity in Taiwanese localization
* Added redirect to section feature. Use it wisely.
* Added a configuration variable allowing the "break out of framesets" feature 
  to be switched on and off ($wgBreakFrames). Off by default.
* Allow Xml::check() $attribs parameter to override 'value' attribute
* DB schema change: added two columns (rc_old_len and rc_new_len) to the recentchanges table to store
  the text lengths before and after the edit
* (bug 1085) Made Special:Recentchanges show the character difference between the changed revisions
* Removed a redundant <strong> tag from diff pages that was causing display issues for some users
* (bug 8203) The keyboard shortcut for "log out" was removed, because users were pressing it
  when they intended to press the shortcut for "preview".
* (bug 8148) Handle non-removable output buffers gracefully when cleaning
  buffers for HTTP 304 responses, StreamFile, and Special:Export.
  Duplicated code merged into wfResetOutputBuffers() and wfClearOutputBuffers()
* Special:AllPages : 'next page' link now point to the first title of the next
  chunk instead of pointing to the last title of current chunk.
* (bug 4673) Special:AllPages : add a 'previous' link (new message 'prevpage')
* (bug 8121) wfRandom() was not between 0 and 1
* Add static method Parser::createAssocArgs($args), so parser functions can
  use the same code to parse arguments as the templates do.
* Change behavior of logins using the temporary e-mailed password (as stored
  in user_newpassword hash field). Instead of just logging in silently and
  leaving the previous user_password field in place indefinitely, the user
  is now prompted to set a new password.
  
  The password-changing form is at Special:Resetpass; currently it's only
  usable for changing from the temporary password during login, but it
  could perhaps be generalized, replacing the subform in preferences.
  
  Once the new password is set successfully, the temporary password is wiped
  so it cannot be used to login a second time, and the login process
  is completed.
* Suppress 'mail new password' button on login form if $wgAuth forbids
  changing user passwords; it wouldn't work very well...
* Consolidate password length checks and $wgAuth manipulation into
  User::setPassword() to avoid duplicate code in different places
  that set passwords.
* User::setPassword() now throws PasswordError exceptions if the password
  is illegal or cannot be set via $wgAuth. These can be caught and a human-
  readable error message displayed by UI code.
* Added Title::isSubpage()
* (bug 8241) Don't consider user pages of User:Foo.css to be CSS subpages
* Set an explicit class on framed thumbnail inner divs and images, changed some 
  CSS to use these instead of using descendent selectors.
* Accept null parameter to User::setPassword() as indicating the password
  field should be cleared to an unusable state. Login will only be possible
  after the password is reset, for instance by e-mail.
* (bug 6394) Invalidate the password set for "by e-mail" account creations
  to avoid accidental empty password creations.
* Made the show change size function work on page moves, page creations, and 
  log entries. Also fixed it in the javascript recentchanges.
* (bug 8239) correctly get 50 new contributions when clicking '(50 next)'
* (bug 2259) Fix old regression where e-mail addresses were no longer
  confirmed on login with mailed password.
* Add a notification about the confirmation mail sent during account
  creation, so people don't immediately go off to request a second one.
* Add a warning on Special:Confirmemail if a code was already sent and has
  not yet expired.
* Add user_editcount field to provide data for heuristics on account use.
  Incremented on edit, with lazy initialization from past revision data.
  Can batch-initialize with maintenance/initEditCount.php (not yet friendly
  to replication environments, this will do all accounts in one query).
* Allow raw SQL subsections in Database::update() SET portion as well as
  for WHERE portion. Handy for increments and such.
* User::getOption now accept a default value to override default user values
  this makes it consistent with WebRequest::get* methods. Corrected code in
  various places accordingly.
* (bug 8264) Fix JavaScript global vars for XHTML mode
* Make $wgSiteNotice value wikitext again, for consistency with editable
  MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice.
* (bug 8044) When redirecting from the canonical name of the special page
  to the localised one, parameters/subpages are omitted
* (bug 8164) Special:Booksources should use GET for form submission
* Rewrite Special:Booksources to clean up interface and remove redundant code
* (bug 7925) Change Special:Allmessages message name filter javascript to be
  a bit more responsive and easier on the CPU
* (bug 4488) Support watching pages on deletion; introduces new user preference
* Minor restructuring of Special:Preferences; "watch pages I edit" and "watch
  pages I create" options now accessible under "Watchlist" options
* (bug 8153) <nowiki> doesn't work in site notice
* (bug 6690) wfMsgNoTrans() transforms messages
* (bug 8274) Wrap edit tools in a <div> with a specified class
* Detect PHP 5.0.x 64-bit bug and abort in WebStart.php; too many things break
  mysteriously otherwise (detection code copied from install-utils.inc)
* (bug 8295) Change handling of <center> tags in doBlockLevels() to match that
  of <div>
* (bug 8110) Make magic ISBN linking stricter: only match ten-digit sequences
  (plus optional ISBN-13 prefix) with no immediately following alphanumeric
  character, disallow multiple consecutive internal redirects
* (bug 2785) Accept optional colon prefix in links when formatting comments
* Don't show "you can view and copy the source of this page" message for
  pages which don't exist
* (bug 8310) Blank line added to top of 'post' when page is blank
* (bug 8109) Template parameters ignored in "recentchangestext"
* Gracefully skip redirect-to-fragment on WebKit versions less than 420;
  it messes up on current versions of Safari but is ok in the latest
  nightlies. Checking the version number will allow it to automatically
  work when new releases of Safari appear.
* Fix regression in thumb styles; size and padding didn't match with
  new arrangement.
* (bug 8333) Fix quick user data update on login password change on
  replication database setups. User data is now pulled from master
  instead of slave in User::loadFromDatabase, ensuring that it is
  fresh and accurate when read and then saved back into cache.
  This was breaking with the Special:Rename operation which
  automatically logs the user in with the new password after changing
  it; pulling from slave meant the record was often not the updated
  one.
* (bug 8335) Set image width to the first valid parameter found.
* (bug 8350) Fix watchlist viewing bug when using Postgres.
* (bug 6603) When warning about invalid file extensions, output the bit
  of the extension we actually checked
* (bug 7669) Drop defaults on BLOB/TEXT columns for better compatibility
  with MySQL's strict mode, often enabled by the Windows installer.
  The defaults are ignored anyway when strict mode is off...
* (bug 7685) Use explicit values for ar_text and ar_flags when deleting,
  for better compatibility with MySQL's strict mode
* Update default interwiki values to reflect changed location of ursine:
* (bug 5411) Remove autopatrol preference
* Users who have the "autopatrol" permission will have their edits marked as
  patrolled automatically
* Users who do not have the "autopatrol" permission will no longer be able
  to mark their own edits as patrolled
* Introduce 'PingLimiter' hook; see docs/hooks.txt for more information
* (bug 532) Tweaked alt text for some interface messages
* (bug 8231) Gave useful alt text to the main <img> on image pages
* (bug 371) Remove alt text for "Enlarge" icon on thumbnails
* Initialize user_editcount to 0 instead of NULL for newly created accounts
* (bug 3696) Strip LRM and RLM characters from titles to work around the
  problem some people have where titles cut-and-pasted from lists include
  the bidi override characters appended to the lists.
  A more thorough blacklist for forbidden and translatable characters would
  be wise, though, as might a cleaner method for the lists in the first place.
* Fix regression in email password resets on read-restricted sites
* Set tabindex on fields in deletion form so you don't have to tab through
  the links in the sitenotice
* (bug 8271) Show full time and date on viewer for individual deleted
  revisions
* (bug 8214) Output file size limit and actual file size in appropriate units
  on Special:Upload
* (bug 8016) Purge objectcache table during upgrade processes - use the --nopurge
  option to prevent this when running maintenance/update.php
* (bug 7612) Remove superfluous link to Special:Categories from result items
  on Special:Mostcategories
* {{PLURAL:}} now handles formatted numbers correctly
* (bug 8331) Added the change size value to watchlists; therefore made
  watchlists use RecentChange::newFromRow() instead of newFromCurRow()
* (bug 8351) Fix undo for simple reverts
* (bug 6856) User::clearNotification() does not respect read-only mode
* (bug 6853) Use a checkbox on the installer form to indicate that a superuser
  account should be used; this is clearer than the old check which relied on
  the password never being an obscure value
* Remove old unused watchlist cache, which was a leftover from the old schema
  where watchlists were more expensive to generate
* Minor cosmetic changes to Special:Userrights
* Added wgCanonicalSpecialPageName to JavaScript variables
* Fix image deleting when using Postgres.
* Output both source and destination titles in maintenance/moveBatch.php
* Added basic parser tests for language variants 
* Enable selflinks and categories to be written in some of the language variants
* Prevent conversion of JavaScript code in language variants
* Output software version number in maintenance/parserTests.php
* (bug 7169) Use Ajax to watch/unwatch articles if enabled
* Make variant table caching a little more robust, using main language code
  in cache key. Probably this is still a bit wonky, though. Was breaking
  parser tests when Chinese tables were getting loaded into Serbian code.
* (bug 8380) Be nicer about blank lines in deleteBatch.php
* (bug 8401) Fix regression in SORBS lookup for some DNS setups
* Use raw file descriptor in posix_isatty() check to avoid warning on
  Linux systems with at least some versions of PHP
* (bug 5908) Allow overriding the default category sort key for all items on
  a page using {{DEFAULTSORT}}
* (bug 6449) Throw a more definitive error message when installation fails
  due to an invalid database name
* (bug 5827) Use full text for option link labels on Special:Watchlist
* (bug 8018) Allow hiding minor edits from the watchlist
* (bug 8427) MonoBook RTL IE 7.0 tweaks failed when sidebar's navigation
  section is renamed; no longer relies on first section name
* Stabilize client-side table sorting even if the underlying Javascript sort()
  implementation is unstable
* Add hook for extensions to add user information to the panel in preferences,
  next to the user name and ID.
* (bug 8392) Display protection status of transcluded pages in the edit page
  template list. Patch by Fyren, with i18n naming tweak.
* Fix for interwiki transclusion where target wiki uses query string for title
* Resolve namespaces on interwiki Title objects using canonical namespace names
  if possible (should not happen, though, outside interwiki transclusion... and
  maybe not even then, but it does)
* (bug 8447) Fix SQL typo breaking non-default $wgHitcounterUpdateFreq
* Do not allow previews of deleted images to be cached
* Add global variable $wgDefaultLanguageVariant used to set the default language 
  variant of a wiki to something different than the main language code
* Add 'variant' option to parserTests - runs test with the given variant as 
  preferred, utilize it for more parser tests of language variants code
* (bug 6503) Fix bug that stopped certain irrelevant links from being hidden
  for printing
* Avoid PHP warning in Creative Commons metadata when a creative commons
  license is not actually set up
* (bug 8463) Don't print external link icons for Monobook
* (bug 8461) Support watching pages on move
* (bug 8041) Work around bug with debug_backtrace when Zend Optimizer is
  loaded by skipping the function. Use wfDebugBacktrace() wrapper function.
* Reduce config file clutter by setting various script and upload paths
  based on $IP or $wgScriptPath in Setup.php. They can still be explicitly
  overridden in LocalSettings.php if desired...
* Attempt to detect redirect loops for the canonical title redirect, and
  give some hints to the poor confused administrator.
* Introduce new flag 'R' - raw output for language variant escape tags
* Advise users when updates for a query page have been disabled using
  $wgDisableQueryPageUpdate
* (bug 8413) Improve comments for $wgNamespaceRobotPolicies
* (bug 8330) Show "bytes" suffix on recent changes diff counter
  optionally... if set in rc-changes-size message (default empty for now)
* (bug 8489) Support basic links in <gallery> caption attribute
* (bug 8485) Correct Lingala number formatting
* The MediaWiki namespace is no longer pre-filled with default messages on
  install. All default messages will be removed from the MediaWiki namespace
  on upgrade.
* Recentchanges RSS/Atom feeds now use a separate message for the description
  to avoid cluttering it with useless wiki formatting
* (bug 8417) Handle EXIF unknown dates
* (bug 8372) Return nothing on empty <math> tags.
* New maintenance script to show the cached statistics : showStats.php.
* Count deleted edits when regenerating total edits in maintenance/initStats.php
* (bug 3706) Allow users to be exempted from IP blocks. The ipblock-exempt permission
  key has been added to enable this behaviour, by default assigned to sysops.
* (bug 7948) importDump.php now warn that Recentchanges need to be rebuild.
* (bug 7667) allow XHTML namespaces customization
* (bug 8531) Correct local name of Lingála (patch by Raymond)
* Fix regression with default lock file and cache directories; threw visible
  warning with open_basedir


== Languages updated ==

* Basque (eu)
* Bishnupriya Manipuri (bpy)
* Cantonese (zh-yue)
* Finnish (fi)
* Frisian (fy)
* German (de)
* Hebrew (he)
* Indonesian (id)
* Italian (it)
* Japanese (ja)
* Kazakh (kk)
* Kongo (kg)
* Latin (la)
* Limburgish (li)
* Lingala (ln)
* Lithuanian (lt)
* Maltese (mt)
* Maori (mi)
* Norwegian (no)
* Occitan (oc)
* Old Church Slavonic (cu)
* Polish (pl)
* Portuguese (pt)
* Ripurian (ksh)
* Russian (ru)
* Slovak (sk)
* Swedish (sv)
* Taiwanese/Holo: (bug 8217) changed language code to nan (from zh-min-nan)
  due to http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=639_3&letter=n
* Upper Sorbian (hsb)
* Vietnamese (vi)

== Compatibility ==

MediaWiki 1.9 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.

PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879
Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.

MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade.
At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.


== Upgrading ==

Some minor database changes have been made since 1.7:
* new fields and indexes on ipblocks
* index change on recentchanges

Several changes from 1.5 and 1.6 do require updates to be run on upgrade.
To ensure that these tables are filled with data, run refreshLinks.php after
the upgrade.

If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database
changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could
break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.



=== Caveats ===

Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)


For notes on 1.8.x and older releases, see HISTORY.


=== Online documentation ===

Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
License:

  http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation


=== Mailing list ===

A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
wikitech-l list:

  http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:

  http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.


=== IRC help ===

There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net