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 1.8.1 ==

October 11, 2006

MediaWiki 1.8.1 fixes several issues in the Fall 2006 snapshot release:

* Fix PHP notice and estimates for dumpBackup.php and friends
* Improved register_globals paranoia checks
* (bug 7545) Fix PHP version check on install
* Experimental web API disabled by default
* Disable PHP exception backtrace printing unless $wgShowExceptionDetails
  is set. Backtraces may contain sensitive information in function call
  parameters.


== MediaWiki 1.8.0 ==

October 10, 2006

This is the quarterly release snapshot for Fall 2006. 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


== Configuration changes ==

* $wgUseETag, to enable/disable sending of HTTP ETag headers
  (default: disabled)
* $wgLegalTitleChars now includes '+' by default for better compatibility
  with importing data dumps from Wikipedia
* $wgDefaultUserOptions now includes all default option settings instead
  of only overrides.


== Major new features ==

* (bug 7098) Add an option to disable/enable sending of HTTP ETag headers,
  as it seems to result in broken behaviour in combination with Squid 2.6
  (disabled by default).
* (bug 550) Allow blocks on anonymous users only.
* (bug 6420) Render thumbnails for DJVU images, support multipage DJVU display
  on image pages. Added new 'page=' thumbnail option to select a page from a
  multipage djvu for thumbnail generation.
* Full Postgres support is now enabled. It requires version 8.1 or better, and 
  needs to have both plpgsql and tsearch2 already installed.
* (bug 6386) fix grammatical errors in danish naming of talk namespaces.

== Changes since 1.7 ==

* Introduced AjaxResponse object, superceding AjaxCachePolicy
* Changes to sajax_do_call: optionally accept an element to fill instead of a
  callback function; take the target function or element as a third parameter;
  pass the full XMLHttpRequest object to the handler function, instead of just
  the resultText value; use HTTP response codes to report errors.
* (bug 6562) Removed unmaintained ParserXml.php for now
* History paging overlap bug fixed
* (bug 6586) Regression in "unblocked" subtitle
* Don't put empty-page message into view-source when page text is blank
* (bug 6587) Remove redundant "allnonarticles" message
* Block improvements: Allow blocks on anonymous users only. Optionally allow 
  or disallow account creation from blocked IP addresses. Prevent duplicate
  blocks. Fixed the problem of expiry and unblocking erroneously affecting
  multiple blocks. Fixed confusing lack of error message when a blocked user
  attempts to create an account. Fixed inefficiency of Special:Ipblocklist in 
  the presence of large numbers of blocks; added indexes and implemented an 
  indexed pager.
* (bug 6448) Allow filtering of Special:Newpages according to username
* (bug 6618) Improve permissions/error detection in Special:Lockdb
* Quick hack for extension testing: parser test doesn't create new message
  cache object.
* (bug 6299) Maintain parser's revision ID across recursive calls to fix
  {{REVISIONID}} when Cite extension is used
* (bug 6622) Removed deprecated function Image::newFromTitle
* (bug 6627) Fix regression in Special:Ipblocklist with table prefix
* Removed forced dereferencements (new() returns a reference in PHP5)
* Note about $wgUploadSizeWarning using byte
* (bug 6592) Add most viewed pages summary to Special:Statistics
* Pre-strip characters ignored in IDNs from URLs so they can't be used
  to break the blacklists for regular URLs
* Fix regression in blocking of user accounts
* (bug 6635) Fix regression searching for range blocks on Ipblocklist
* Fix regression searching Ipblocklist with ugly URLs
* (bug 6639) Use a consistent default for upload directories
* Preserve entered reason when reporting unconfirmed lock on Special:Lockdb
* (bug 6642) Don't offer to unlock the database when it isn't locked
* cleanupTitles.php changed from --dry-run option to --fix, so default
  behavior is now a non-invasive check as with namespaceDupes.php
* (bug 6660) Fix behaviour of EditPage::blockedPage() when the article does
  not exist; now doesn't show the source box if the user hasn't provided it
  (blocked mid-edit) and the page doesn't exist
* Improve default value of "blockedtext"
* (bug 6680) Added localisation for Dutch bookstore list (nl)
* Renamed maintainace script redundanttrans.php to unusedMessages.php - clearer usage
* Fix regression which allowed some blocked users to create additional accounts
* (bug 6657) Fix Hungarian linktrail
* (bug 6751) Fix preview of blanked section with edit on first preview option
* (bug 5456) Separate MediaWiki:Search into messages for both noun and verb,
  introduced 'MediaWiki:Searchbutton'
* Made lines from initialiseMessages() appear as list items during installation
* Moved the bulk of the localisation data from the Language*.php files to the
  Messages*.php files. Deleted most of the Languages*.php files.
* Introduced "stub global" framework to provide deferred initialisation of core
  modules. 
* Removed placeholder values for $wgTitle and $wgArticle, these variables will
  now be null during the initialisation process, until they are set by index.php
  or another entry point.
* Added DBA cache type, for BDB-style caches. 
* Removed custom date format functions, replacing them with a format string in
  the style of PHP's date(). Used string identifiers instead of integer
  identifiers, in both the language files and user preferences. Migration should
  be transparent in most cases.
* Simplified the initialisation API for LoadBalancer objects.
* Removed the broken altencoding feature.
* Moved default user options and toggles from Language to User. Language objects
  are still able to define default preference overrides and extra user toggles, 
  via a slightly different interface.
* Don't include the date option in the parser cache rendering hash unless
  $wgUseDynamicDates is enabled.
* Merged LanguageUtf8 with Language. Removed LanguageUtf8.php. 
* Removed inclusion of language files from the bottom of Language.php. This is
  now consistently done from Language::factory(). 
* Add the name of the executing maintenance script to the debug log. Start the
  profiler during maintenance scripts.
* Added "serialized" directory, for storing precompiled data in serialized form.
* Fix regression in auto-set NS_PROJECT_TALK namespace
* Fix regression in ordering of namespaces
* (bug 6806, 6030) Added several global JS variables for article path, user name,
  page title, etc. 
* hooks registered with addOnloadHook are now called at the one of the html body
  by all skins.
* Split ajax aided search from core ajax framework. Use wgUseAjax to enable the
  framework and wgAjaxSearch to enable the suggest feature for the search box.
* Added experimental installer for extensions. 
  See maintenance/installExtension.php
* Added Tajic (tg) language file.
* (bug 6903) Added Cantonese localisation (zh-yue)
* Fix regression in Korean and Japanese date formatting (day of week)
* (bug 6919) Add English alias magic words for Tatar (tt) language file.
* (bug 6753) Fixed broken Kazakh linktrail (kk)
* (bug 6700) Added Kazakh language variants to Names.php
* (bug 6827) some i18n specific maintenance scripts fails after merge of localisation-work branch
* Throwed an exception for the deprecated functions OutputPage::sysopRequired and
  OutputPage::developerRequired - use OutputPage::permissionRequired instead.
* Removed the deprecated functions User::isSysop, User::isBureaucrat and User::isDeveloper -
  use User::isAllowed instead.
* (bug 769) OutputPage::permissionRequired() should suggest groups with the needed permission
* (bug 6971) Fix regression in Special:Export history view
* Revamped Special:Imagelist
* (bug 7000) updated MessagesPl.php
* (bug 6946) Fix unexpected behavior change with GET hits to Special:Export
* (bug 1866) Improve navigation on Special:Listusers; user now a starting
  point as with Special:Allpages, rather than a pure limit.
* Clean up tab order on Special:Blockip
* (bug 5969) Clean up tab order on Special:Userlogin forms
* (bug 3512) namespaceDupes now handles spaces and initial caps properly
* (bug 7037) Fix regression in login tab order
* (bug 7031) Report missing email on 'email password' instead of false success
* (bug 7010) Don't send email notifications for watched talk pages when user
  has selected to receive only updates for their own talk page
* Added {{CURRENTHOUR}}
* Added [[:Image:Foo.png]] style links to the pagelinks table
* Avoid duplicate revision imports with Special:Import
* (bug 7054) Validate email address before sending email confirmation message
* (bug 7061) Format title on "from (page)" links on Special:Allpages
* (bug 7044) Introduce "padleft" and "padright" colon functions
* Pass page title as parameters to "linkshere" and "nolinkshere" and update
  default message text
* Allows to upload from publicy accessible URL. Set $wgAllowCopyUploads = true ; in LocalSettings.php
  Limited to $wgMaxUploadSize (default:100MB); URL upload is limited to sysops by default, and displayed as a second line if appropriate
* (bug 832) Return to user page after emailing a user
* (bug 366) Add local-system-timezone equivalents for date/time variables
* (bug 7109) Fix Atom feed version number in header links
* (bug 7075) List registered parser function hooks on Special:Version
* (bug 7059) Introduce "anchorencode" colon function
* Include SVN revision number in {{CURRENTVERSION}} output, where applicable
* Fix bug in wfRunHooks which caused corruption of objects in the hook list
* (bug 4979) Use simplified email addresses when running on Windows
* (bug 4434) Show block log fragment on Special:Blockip
* [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]] may optionally contain wiki links to any number 
  of disambiguation templates.
* [[Special:Disambiguations]] now shows pages in NS:0 that link to any pages that embed
  any of the templates listed at [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]].
* Fix formatting of titles on Special:Undelete
* (bug 7026) Fix action=raw&templates=expand
* (bug 6976) Add namespace and direction classes to classic skins
* (bug 7144) Don't "return to main" from OutputPage::loginToUse() if the the user can't
  read the main page in the first place
* (bug 7188) Fix minor borkage in HTMLForm
* (bug 6675) Replaced message 'watchthis' with new message 'watchthisupload in Special:Upload
* Add a quickie script dumpSisterSites.php for generating a page list in the
  format for WSR-1 SisterSites support
* (bug 7223) Monobook.js is used for site content, should not be localized
* Set default disabled values for DjVu render options
* Added Xml::option() for generating <option>s easily
* Localized page numbers in drop-down for DjVu page selection
* Fixed linktrail for vi
* (bug 6893) "Call to a member function exists() on a non-object" on trackback.php with bad input
* (bug 6886) PHP undefined offset on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete
* (bug 6887) PHP error for call to getId() on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete
* (bug 6888) PHP error for call to getTimestamp() on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete
* (bug 7252) Use dvipng support in texvc math rastrization. dvipng is required if texvc is rebuilt.
* (bug 7279) Use wfBaseName in place of basename() in more places
* Clear newtalk marker on diff links with explicit current revision number
* (bug 7064) Replace hard-coded empty message checks with wfEmptyMsg calls
* (bug 6777) Remove some PHP 4 compat cruft
* Add --user, --comment, and --license options to importImages.php
* (bug 6216) The immobile namespace message does not mention the source page
* (bug 7299) Normalize username filter on Special:Newpages
* (bug 7306) RTL text in an LTR wiki breaks appearance of Special:Recentchanges
* (bug 7312) Don't emit SET NAMES utf8 if connection failed
* (bug 7305) Proper compare for bot check on RC notify, should fix overrides
  that force edits by non-bot users to bot mode
* Set Vary: Cookie on action=raw generated CSS and JS, to ensure that user
  preferences don't get stuck in proxy caches for other people
* (bug 7324) Fix error message for failure of Database::sourceFile()
* (bug 7309) Plurals: use singular form for zero in French and Brazilian Portuguese
* Add page_no_title_convert field to support language variant conversion
  for page titles which shouldn't be converted on display/linking
* Lazy extraction of text chunks in Revision objects, may reduce hits to
  external storage when actual text content is not used
* Added experimental $wgRevisionCacheExpiry to cache extracted revision text
  in $wgMemc, to further reduce hits to external storage.
  Set to 0 (disabled) by default.
* Minor changes to the installer. 
* Remove ":" for 'youremail' and 'yourrealname' in includes/templates/Userlogin.php
  so that ":" could be used in i18n for Special:Preferences (like 'username' and 'uid').
* Fix layout for Special:Preferences->Date and Time (position for 'timezonetext').
* Updates to language variant code for Serbian et al
* (bug 6756) Enabling RTL direction for kk-cn
* (bug 6701) Kazakh language variants in MessagesEn.php
* (bug 7335) SVN revision check in Special:Version fails on SVN 1.4 working copy
* (bug 6518) Replaced 'lastmodified' with 'lastmodifiedat' and 'lastmodifiedby' with 'lastmodifiedatby'
  with seperated parameters for date and time to allow better localisation. Updated all message files
  to display the old format for compatibility.
* (bug 7357) Make supposedly static methods of Skin actually static
* Added info text to Special:Deadendpages and Special:Lonelypages
* Fix regression in cachability of generated CSS and JS for MonoBook skin,
  while avoiding clobbering of different users' cached data
* (bug 6849) Block @ from usernames; interferes with multi-database tools and
  was meant to be banned years ago... For now existing accounts will not be
  prevented fromm login.
* (bug 6092) Introduce magic words {{REVISIONDAY}}, {{REVISIONDAY2}, {{REVISIONMONTH}},
  {{REVISIONYEAR}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} 
* (bug 7425) Preceeding whitespace in [[...]] breaks subpages
* Try to reconnect after transitory database errors in dumpTextPass.php
* (bug 6023) Fixed mismatch of 0/NULL for wl_notificationtimestamp; now notification
  mails are working after 'Mark all pages visited' button on Special:Watchlist is clicked
* Made {{INT:}} a core parser function instead of a special case. The syntax 
  and behaviour is largely unchanged. 
* (bug 7448) Fixing the native name for Ewe (ee)
* (bug 6864) Replace message 'editing' with new message 'editinguser' in Special:Userrights
  to allow better localisation
* Add '*-summary' for special pages to MessagesEn.php to allow customizing/translation
  directly through Special:Allmessages
* (bug 6130, bug 5818) Replaced message 'go'  with the new message 'searcharticle' in skins
  to allow better localisation
* Add + to $wgLegalTitleChars by default. Some sites may have occasional
  problems with hard-to-reach pages, but it should be less trouble than
  "I can't import dumps from Wikipedia" complaints
* (bug 7460) Revert broken patch for bug 7226 which slows down
  Special:Allmessages by a factor of 16
* Committed a bunch of live hacks from Wikimedia servers
* (bug 6889) PHP notices in thumb.php with missing params
* Cleaner error behavior on thumb.php with invalid page selection
* (bug 6617) Validate timestamps on Special:Undelete
* Do fewer unnecessary full writes of user rows; only update user_touched
  for watch/unwatch, group membership change, and login operations
* Restructured the languages directory, to avoid problems when people 
  untar MW 1.8 over the top of a 1.7 installation.  
* (bug 6890) SQL query error on bad input to Pager lists 
  due to negative LIMIT clause, caused by integer wraparound.
* Fixed various bugs related to table prefixes, especially the interaction
  between table prefixes and memcached, which was formerly completely broken.
* (bug 7004) PHP iconv() notice on bad password input to Special:Userlogin.
* (bug 6826) Extend pre-save transform context link ("pipe trick")
  syntax to pages with commas in title
* Use ImageMagick -thumbnail option instead of -resize to avoid including
  excessive metadata in thumbs (requires ImageMagick 6.0.0 or newer).
* (bug 7499) Corrections to Swedish talk namespace names
* (bug 7508) Added option to compress HTML pages by dumpHTML.php
* (bug 7519) Add plural in SpecialWatchlist
* (bug 7459) Magic word variables are always case sensitive
* Replaced {{SERVER}}{{localurl:xxx}} with {{fullurl:xxx}} in localisation files
* Fix regression in Special:Watchlist text header
* (bug 7510) Update article counts etc on undelete
* (bug 7520) Update article counts on XML import
* (bug 7526) Make $wgDefaultUserOptions work again
* (bug 7472) Localize Help namespace for Basque
* (bug 7529) Including a non-existent category in an article places that article in the category
* (bug 4528) Lack of important LaTeX functions stackrel, rightleftharpoon
* (bug 6721) missing symbols ulcorner, urcorner, llcorner, lrcorner, twoheadrightarrow, twoheadleftarrow
* (bug 7367) Hyphens sometimes erroneously appended to equations when not converted to PNG
* Add "title" to the opensearch link to allow automatic adding of the search engine in Firefox 2
* (bug 7537) Add php5 to $wgFileBlacklist
* (bug 6929) Restore AutoAuthenticate hook


== Languages updated ==

* Albanian (sq)
* Bashkir (ba)
* Bavarian (bar) stub file
* Belarusian (be)
* Bishnupriya (bpy) stub file
* Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br)
* Cantonese (zh-yue)
* Catalan (ca)
* Czech (cs)
* Dutch (nl)
* English (en)
* Finnish (fi)
* French (fr)
* Georgian (ka)
* German (de)
* Hebrew (he)
* Hungarian (hu)
* Indonesian (id)
* Japanese (ja)
* Korean (ko)
* Latin (la)
* Lojban (jbo)
* Macedonian (mk)
* Mazandarani (mzn)
* Polish (pl)
* Portuguese (pt)
* Ripuarian (ksh)
* Romani (rmy)
* Russian (ru)
* Slovak (sk)
* Spanish (es)
* Tajic (tg)
* Tatar (tt)
* Telugu (te)
* Uzbek (uz)
* Yiddish (yi)

== Compatibility ==

MediaWiki 1.8 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.

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 1.5.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://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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

  http://mail.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