1 Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals. If you
2 have it on, turn it '''off''' if you can.
6 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
8 MediaWiki 1.21 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in
11 === Configuration changes in 1.21 ===
12 * (bug 29374) $wgVectorUseSimpleSearch is now enabled by default.
13 * Deprecated $wgAllowRealName is removed. Use $wgHiddenPrefs[] = 'realname'
15 * (bug 39957) Added $wgUnwatchedPageThreshold, specifying minimum count
16 of page watchers required for the number to be accessible to users
17 without the unwatchedpages permission.
18 * $wgBug34832TransitionalRollback has been removed.
19 * (bug 29472) $wgUseDynamicDates has been removed and its functionality
22 === New features in 1.21 ===
23 * (bug 38110) Schema changes (adding or dropping tables, indices and
24 fields) can be now be done separately from from other changes that
25 update.php makes. This is useful in environments that use database
26 permissions to restrict schema changes but allow the DB user that
27 MediaWiki normally runs as to perform other changes that update.php
28 makes. Schema changes can be run separately. See the file UPGRADE
30 * (bug 34876) jquery.makeCollapsible has been improved in performance.
31 * Added ContentHandler facility to allow extensions to support other content
32 than wikitext. See docs/contenthandler.txt for details.
33 * New feature was developed for showing high-DPI thumbnails for high-DPI mobile
34 and desktop displays (configurable with $wgResponsiveImages).
35 * Added new backend to represent and store information about sites and site
36 specific configuration.
37 * jQuery upgraded from 1.8.2 to 1.8.3.
38 * jQuery UI upgraded from 1.8.23 to 1.8.24.
39 * Added separate fa_sha1 field to filearchive table. This allows sha1
40 searches with the api in miser mode for deleted files.
41 * Add initial and programmatic sorting for tablesorter.
42 * Add the event "sortEnd.tablesorter", triggered after sorting has completed.
43 * The Job system was refactored to allow for different backing stores for
44 queues as well as cross-wiki access to queues, among other things. The schema
45 for the DB queue was changed to support better concurrency and reduce
47 * Added ApiQueryORM class to facilitate creation of query API modules based on
48 tables that have a corresponding ORMTable class.
49 * (bug 40876) Icon for PSD (Adobe Photoshop) file types.
50 * (bug 40641) Implemented Special:Version/Credits with a list of contributors.
51 * (bug 7851) Implemented one-click AJAX patrolling.
52 * The <data>, <time>, <meta>, and <link> elements are allowed within WikiText
53 for use with Microdata.
54 * The HTML5 <mark> tag has been whitelisted.
55 * Added ParserCloned hook for when the Parser object is cloned.
56 * Added AlternateEditPreview hook to allow extensions to replace the page
57 preview from the edit page.
58 * Added EditPage::showStandardInputs:options hook to allow extensions to add
59 new fields to the "editOptions" area of the edit form.
60 * Upload stash DB schema altered to improve upload performance.
61 * The following global functions are now reporting deprecated warnings in
62 debug mode: wfMsg, wfMsgNoTrans, wfMsgForContent, wfMsgForContentNoTrans,
63 wfMsgReal, wfMsgGetKey, wfMsgHtml, wfMsgWikiHtml, wfMsgExt, wfEmptyMsg. Use
64 the Message class, or the global method wfMessage.
65 * Added $wgEnableCanonicalServerLink, off by default. If enabled, a
66 <link rel=canonical> tag is added to every page indicating the correct server
68 * Debug message emitted by wfDebugLog() will now be prefixed with the group
69 name when its logged to the default log file. That is the case whenever the
70 group has no key in wgDebugLogGroups, that will help triage the default log.
71 * (bug 24620) Add types to LogFormatter.
72 * jQuery JSON upgraded from 2.3 to 2.4.0.
73 * Added GetDoubleUnderscoreIDs hook, for modifying the list of magic words.
74 * DatabaseUpdater class has two new methods to ease extensions schema changes:
75 dropExtensionIndex and renameExtensionIndex.
76 * New preference type - 'api'. Preferences of this type are not shown on
77 Special:Preferences, but are still available via the action=options API.
78 * (bug 39397) Hide rollback link if a user is the only contributor of the page.
79 * $wgPageInfoTransclusionLimit limits the list size of transcluded articles
80 on the info action. Default is 50.
81 * Added action=createaccount to allow user account creation.
82 * (bug 40124) action=options API also allows for setting of arbitrary
83 preferences, provided that their names are prefixed with 'userjs-'. This
84 officially reenables the feature that was undocumented and defective
85 in MW 1.20 (saving preferences using Special:Preferences cleared any
86 additional fields) and which has been disabled in 1.20.1 as a part of
87 a security fix (bug 42202).
88 * Added option to specify "others" as author in extension credits using
90 * Added the ability to limit the wall clock time used by shell processes,
91 as well as the CPU time. Configurable with $wgMaxShellWallClockTime.
92 * Allow memory of shell subprocesses to be limited using Linux cgroups
93 instead of ulimit -v, which tends to cause deadlocks in recent versions
94 of ImageMagick. Configurable with $wgShellCgroup.
95 * Added $wgWhitelistReadRegexp for regex whitelisting.
96 * (bug 5346) Categories that are redirects will be displayed italic in
97 the category links section at the bottom of a page.
98 * (bug 43915) New maintenance script deleteEqualMessages.php.
99 * You can now create checkbox option matrices through the HTMLCheckMatrix
100 subclass in HTMLForm.
101 * WikiText now permits the use of WAI-ARIA's role="presentation" inside of
102 html elements and tables. This allows presentational markup, especially
103 tables. To be marked up as such.
104 * maintenance/sql.php learned the --cluster option. Let you run the script
105 on some external cluster instead of the primary cluster for a given wiki.
106 * (bug 20281) test the parsing of inline URLs.
107 * Added Special:PagesWithProp, which lists pages using a particular page property.
108 * Implemented language-specific collations for category sorting for 67 languages
109 based in latin, greek and cyrillic alphabets. This allows one to *finally* get
110 articles to be correctly sorted on category pages. They are named
111 'uca-<langcode>', where <langcode> is one of: af, ast, az, be, bg, br, bs, ca,
112 co, cs, cy, da, de, dsb, el, en, eo, es, et, eu, fi, fo, fr, fur, fy, ga, gd,
113 gl, hr, hsb, hu, is, it, kk, kl, ku, ky, la, lb, lt, lv, mk, mo, mt, nl, no,
114 oc, pl, pt, rm, ro, ru, rup, sco, sk, sl, smn, sq, sr, sv, tk, tl, tr, tt, uk,
116 * Added 'CategoryAfterPageAdded' and 'CategoryAfterPageRemoved' hooks.
117 * Added 'HistoryRevisionTools' and 'DiffRevisionTools' hooks.
118 * Added 'SpecialSearchResultsPrepend' and 'SpecialSearchResultsAppend' hooks.
119 * (bug 33186) Add image rotation api "imagerotate"
120 * (bug 34040) Add "User rights management" link on user page toolbox.
121 * (bug 45526) Add QUnit assertion helper "QUnit.assert.htmlEqual" for asserting
122 structual equality of HTML (ignoring insignificant differences like
123 quotmarks, order and whitespace in the attribute list).
125 === Bug fixes in 1.21 ===
126 * (bug 42649) PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function isLocal() on a
127 non-object in Title.php
128 * (bug 46493) Special:ProtectedPages results in whitepage when a bad title is protected
129 * (bug 40617) Installer can now customize the logo in LocalSettings.php
130 * (bug 40353) SpecialDoubleRedirect should support interwiki redirects.
131 * (bug 40352) fixDoubleRedirects.php should support interwiki redirects.
132 * (bug 9237) SpecialBrokenRedirect should not list interwiki redirects.
133 * (bug 34960) Drop unused fields rc_moved_to_ns and rc_moved_to_title from
135 * (bug 32951) Do not register internal externals with absolute protocol,
136 when server has relative protocol.
137 * (bug 39005) When purging proxies listed in $wgSquidServers using HTTP PURGE
138 method requests, we now send a Host header by default, for Varnish
139 compatibility. This also works with Squid in reverse-proxy mode. If you wish
140 to support Squid configured in forward-proxy mode, set
141 $wgSquidPurgeUseHostHeader to false.
142 * (bug 37020) sql.php with readline eats semicolon.
143 * (bug 11748) Properly handle optionally-closed HTML tags when Tidy is
144 disabled, and don't wrap HTML-syntax definition lists in paragraphs.
145 * (bug 41409) Diffs while editing an old revision should again diff against the
147 * (bug 41494) Honor $wgLogExceptionBacktrace when logging non-API exceptions
148 caught during API execution.
149 * (bug 37963) Fixed loading process for user options.
150 * (bug 26995) Update filename field on Upload page after having sanitized it.
151 * (bug 41793) Contribution links to users with 0 edits on Special:ListUsers
153 * (bug 41899) A PHP notice no longer occurs when using the "rvcontinue" API
155 * (bug 42036) Account creation emails now contain canonical (not
156 protocol-relative) URLs.
157 * (bug 41990) Fix regression: API edit with redirect=true and lacking
158 starttimestamp and basetimestamp should not cause an edit conflict.
159 * (bug 41706) EditPage: Preloaded page should be converted if possible and
161 * (bug 41886) Rowspans are no longer exploded by tablesorter until the table is
163 * (bug 2865) User interface HTML elements don't use lang attribute.
164 (completed the fix by adding the lang attribute to firstHeading).
165 * (bug 42173) Removed namespace prefixes on Special:UncategorizedCategories.
166 * (bug 36053) Log in "returnto" feature forgets query parameters if no
167 title parameter was specified.
168 * (bug 42410) API action=edit now returns correct timestamp for the new edit.
169 * (bug 14901) Email notification mistakes log action for new page creation.
170 Enotif no longer sends "page has been created" notifications for some log
171 actions. The following events now have a correct message: page creation,
172 deletion, move, restore (undeletion), change (edit). Parameter
173 $CHANGEDORCREATED is deprecated in 'enotif_body' and scheduled for removal in
175 * (bug 457) In the sidebar of Vector, CologneBlue, Monobook, and Monobook-based
176 skins, the heading levels have been changed from (variously per skin)
177 <h4>, <h5> or <h6> to only <h3>s, with a <h2> hidden heading above them.
178 If you are styling or scripting the headings in a custom way, this change
179 will require updates to your site's CSS or JS.
180 * (bug 41342) jquery.suggestions should cancel any active (async) fetches
181 before it triggers another fetch.
182 * (bug 42184) $wgUploadSizeWarning missing second variable.
183 * (bug 34581) removeUnusedAccounts.php maintenance script now ignores newuser
184 log when determining whether an account is used.
185 * (bug 43379) Gracefully fail if rev_len is unavailable for a revision on the
187 * (bug 42949) API no longer assumes all exceptions are MWException.
188 * (bug 41733) Hide "New user message" (.usermessage) element from printable view.
189 * (bug 39062) Special:Contributions will display changes that don't have
190 a parent id instead of just an empty bullet item.
191 * (bug 37209) "LinkCache doesn't currently know about this title" error fixed.
192 * wfMerge() now works if $wgDiff3 contains spaces
193 * (bug 43052) mediawiki.action.view.dblClickEdit.dblClickEdit should trigger
194 ca-edit click instead opening URL directly.
195 * (bug 43964) Invalid value of "link" parameter in <gallery> no longer produces
197 * (bug 44775) The username field is not pre-filled when creating an account.
198 * (bug 45069) wfParseUrl() no longer produces a PHP notice if passed a "mailto:"
200 * (bug 45012) Creating an account by e-mail can no longer show a
201 "password mismatch" error.
202 * (bug 44599) On Special:Version, HEADs for submodule checkouts (e.g. for
203 extensions) performed using Git 1.7.8+ should now appear.
204 * (bug 42184) $wgUploadSizeWarning missing second variable
205 * (bug 40326) Check if files exist with a different extension during uploading
206 * (bug 34798) Updated CSS for Atom/RSS recent changes feeds to match on-wiki diffs.
207 * (bug 42430) Calling numRows on MySQL no longer propagates unrelated errors.
208 * (bug 44719) Removed mention of non-existing maintenance/migrateCurStubs.php
209 script in includes/DefaultSettings.php
210 * (bug 45143) jquery.badge: Treat non-Latin variants of zero as zero as well.
211 * (bug 46151) mwdocgen.php should not ignore exit code of doxygen command.
212 * (bug 41889) Fix $.tablesorter rowspan exploding for complex cases.
213 * (bug 47489) Installer now automatically selects the next-best database type if
214 the PHP mysql extension is not loaded, preventing fatal errors in some cases.
215 * (bug 47202) wikibits: FF2Fixes.css should not be loaded in Firefox 20.
217 === API changes in 1.21 ===
218 * prop=revisions can now report the contentmodel and contentformat.
219 See docs/contenthandler.txt.
220 * action=edit and action=parse now support contentmodel and contentformat
221 parameters to control the interpretation of page content.
222 See docs/contenthandler.txt for details.
223 * (bug 35693) ApiQueryImageInfo now suppresses errors when unserializing metadata.
224 * (bug 40111) Disable minor edit for page/section creation by API.
225 * (bug 41042) Revert change to action=parse&page=... behavior when the page
227 * (bug 27202) Add timestamp sort to list=allimages.
228 * (bug 43137) Don't return the sha1 of revisions through the API if the content is
230 * ApiQueryImageInfo now also returns imageinfo for redirects.
231 * list=alltransclusions added to enumerate every instance of page embedding
232 * list=alllinks & alltransclusions now allow both 'from' and 'continue' in
233 the same query. When both are present, 'from' is simply ignored.
234 * list=alllinks & alltransclusions now allow 'unique' in generators, to yield
235 a list of all link/template target pages instead of source pages.
236 * BREAKING CHANGE: list=logevents output format changed for details of some log
237 types. Specifically, details that were formerly reported under a key like
238 "4::foo" will now be reported under a key of simply "foo".
239 * BREAKING CHANGE: '??_badcontinue' error code was changed to '??badcontinue'
240 for all query modules.
241 * ApiQueryBase adds 'badcontinue' error code if module has 'continue' parameter.
242 * (bug 35885) Removed version parameter and all getVersion() methods.
243 * action=options now takes a "resetkinds" option, which allows only resetting
244 certain types of preferences when the "reset" option is set.
245 * (bug 36751) ApiQueryImageInfo now returns imageinfo for the redirect target
246 when queried with &redirects=.
247 * (bug 31849) ApiQueryImageInfo no longer gets confused when asked for info on
248 a redirect and its target.
249 * (bug 43849) ApiQueryImageInfo no longer throws exceptions with ForeignDBRepo
251 * On error, any warnings generated before that error will be shown in the result.
252 * action=help supports generalized submodules (modules=query+value), querymodules obsolete
253 * ApiQueryImageInfo continuation is more reliable. The only major change is
254 that the imagerepository property will no longer be set on page objects not
255 processed in the current query (i.e. non-images or those skipped due to
257 * Add supports for all pageset capabilities - generators, redirects, converttitles to
258 action=purge and action=setnotificationtimestamp.
259 * (bug 43251) prop=pageprops&ppprop= now accepts multiple props to query.
260 * ApiQueryImageInfo will now limit the number of calls to File::transform made
261 in any one query. If there are too many, iicontinue will be returned.
262 * action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=general will now return the regexes used for
263 link trails and link prefixes. Added for Parsoid support.
264 * Added an API query module list=pageswithprop, which lists pages using a
265 particular page property.
266 * Added an API query module list=pagepropnames, which lists all page prop names
267 currently in use on the wiki.
268 * (bug 44921) ApiMain::execute() will now return after the CORS check for an
269 HTTP OPTIONS request.
270 * (bug 44923) action=upload works correctly if the entire file is uploaded in
272 * Added 'continue=' parameter to streamline client iteration over complex query results
273 * (bug 44909) API parameters may now be marked as type "upload", which is now
274 used for action=upload's 'file' and 'chunk' parameters. This type will raise
275 an error during parameter validation if the parameter is given but not
276 recognized as an uploaded file.
277 * (bug 44244) prop=info may now return the number of people watching each page.
278 * (bug 33304) list=allpages will no longer return duplicate entries when
280 * (bug 33304) list=allpages will now find really old indefinite protections.
281 * (bug 45937) meta=allmessages will report a syntactically invalid lang as a
282 proper error instead of as an uncaught exception.
283 * The JSON output formatter now leaves forward slashes unescaped to improve human
284 readability of URLs and similar strings. Also, a "utf8" option is now provided
285 to use UTF-8 encoding instead of hex escape codes for most non-ASCII characters.
287 === API internal changes in 1.21 ===
288 * For debugging only, a new global $wgDebugAPI removes many API restrictions when true.
289 Never use on the production servers, as this flag introduces security holes.
290 Whenever enabled, a warning will also be added to all output.
291 * ApiModuleManager now handles all submodules (actions,props,lists) and instantiation
292 * Query stores prop/list/meta as submodules
293 * ApiPageSet can now be used in any action to process titles/pageids/revids or any generator.
294 * BREAKING CHANGE: ApiPageSet constructor now has two params instead of three, with only the
295 first one keeping its meaning. ApiPageSet is now derived from ApiBase.
296 * BREAKING CHANGE: ApiQuery::newGenerator() and executeGeneratorModule() were deleted.
297 * ApiQueryGeneratorBase::setGeneratorMode() now requires a pageset param.
298 * $wgAPIGeneratorModules is now obsolete and will be ignored.
299 * Added flags ApiResult::OVERRIDE and ADD_ON_TOP to setElement() and addValue()
300 * Internal API calls will now include <warnings> in case of unused parameters
302 === Languages updated in 1.21 ===
304 MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated
305 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
306 changes to languages because of Bugzilla reports.
308 * South Azerbaijani (azb) added.
309 * (bug 30040) Autonym for nds-nl is now 'Nedersaksies' (was 'Nedersaksisch').
310 * (bug 45436) Autonym for pi (Pali) is now 'पालि' (was ''पाळि').
311 * (bug 34977) Now formatted numbers in Spanish use space as separator
312 for thousands, as mandated by the Real Academia Española.
313 * (bug 35031) Kurdish formatted numbers now use period and comma
314 as separators for thousands and decimals respectively.
316 === Other changes in 1.21 ===
317 * BREAKING CHANGE: (bug 44385) Removed the jquery.collapsibleTabs module and
318 moved it to the Vector extension. It was entirely Vector-extension-specific,
319 deeply interconnected with the extension, and this functionality really
320 belongs to the extension instead of the skin anyway. In the unlikely case you
321 were using it, you have to either copy it to your extension, or install the
322 Vector extension (and possibly disable its features using config settings if
323 you don't want them).
324 * Experimental IBM DB2 support was removed due to lack of interest and maintainership.
325 * BREAKING CHANGE: Filenames of maintenance scripts were standardized into
326 lowerCamelCase format, and made more explicit:
327 - clear_stats.php -> clearCacheStats.php
328 - clear_interwiki_cache.php -> clearInterwikiCache.php
329 - initStats.php -> initSiteStats.php
330 - proxy_check.php -> proxyCheck.php
331 - stats.php -> showCacheStats.php
332 - showStats.php -> showSiteStats.php.
333 Class names were renamed accordingly:
334 - clear_stats -> ClearCacheStats
335 - InitStats -> InitSiteStats
336 - CacheStats -> ShowCacheStats
337 - ShowStats -> ShowSiteStats.
338 * BREAKING CHANGE: (bug 38244) Removed the mediawiki.api.titleblacklist module
339 and moved it to the TitleBlacklist extension.
340 * BREAKING CHANGE: Implementation of MediaWiki's JS and JSON value encoding
342 ** MediaWiki no longer supports PHP installations in which the native JSON
343 extension is missing or disabled.
344 ** XmlJsCode objects can no longer be nested inside objects or arrays.
345 (For Xml::encodeJsCall(), this individually applies to each argument.)
346 ** The sets of characters escaped by default, along with the precise escape
347 sequences used, have changed (except for the Xml::escapeJsString()
348 function, which is now deprecated).
349 * BREAKING CHANGE: The Services_JSON class has been removed. If necessary,
350 be sure to upgrade affected extensions at the same time (e.g. Collection).
354 MediaWiki 1.21 requires PHP 5.3.2 or later.
356 MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but
357 support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for
360 The supported versions are:
362 * MySQL 5.0.2 or later
363 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
364 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
365 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
369 1.21 has several database changes since 1.20, and will not work without schema
370 updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision
371 table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site,
372 many hours on a large site).
374 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons
375 repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise
376 due to database schema changes.
378 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
379 new database fields are filled with data.
381 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to
382 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed
385 Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
387 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
389 For notes on 1.19.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
391 == Online documentation ==
393 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on
394 MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except
395 for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
397 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
401 A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
403 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
405 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
407 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
409 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
410 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
414 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.