Make RC patroling an optional feature that can be turned off by setting wgUseRCPatrol...

[mediawiki.git] / RELEASE-NOTES

= MediaWiki release notes =

== Version 1.3.0beta4, 2004-06-26 ==

**** THIS IS A BETA AND MAY STUNT YOUR GROWTH OR KILL YOUR PETS ****

Look & layout:
* New default layout 'MonoBook'
* Print stylesheet now built-in to every page
* More or less correct XHTML 1.0 (served as text/html by default)

Wiki features:
* Image captions can now include links and other basic formatting
* Image bounding box can be specified instead of width, e.g. as
  100x100px, making the image not wider than 100px and not higher
  than 100px, keeping aspect ratio.
* Templates have been expanded with parameters, and separated from
  the MediaWiki: localization scheme.
* Categories more or less work
* added a special page for listing users with sysop rights.

Editing:
* Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere
* Edit summaries can now include basic formatting and links

Metadata and output:
* Linked Creative Commons copyright metadata (optional)
* RSS 2.0 & Atom 0.3 feeds for Recent Changes, New Pages

Optional modules:
* WikiHiero hieroglyphic module can be added (separate download)
* Timeline module can be added (separate download).
  Requires ploticus.
* TeX now has an experimental MathML output mode (incomplete)

Installation and upgrading:
* The old install.php and update.php have been removed. In-place
  installation introduced in 1.2 is now the standard installation
  and upgrade method, see INSTALL for directions.

Database:
* The links table has been changed to use a cur_id for l_from.
  The link tables must be converted on upgrade, which may entail
  some downtime.

Code and compatibility:
* Should now run clean with error reporting set to E_ALL.
* register_globals hack from 1.2 has been replaced with safer code
* Bundled PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
  (with some patches)
* Most image-related code moved to Image.php
* More fixes for PHP 4.1.2 (thanks to Asheesh Laroia)
* URL encoding fix for anchors
* All languages now available in UTF-8 mode
* Various other fixes

=== 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.)


== Version 1.2.6, 2004-05-24 ==
* Spam blocker ($wgSpamRegex - refuses to save edits that match)
* Updated documentation about $wgWhitelistRead
* Ensure that searchindex table is created as MyISAM
* Interwiki cache timeout (memcached)
* Fix uploads on Windows with magic_quotes_gpc
* Some config fixes for Windows (slashes etc)
* Local interwiki URL redirects
* Fixed obscure deletion problem in squid mode on corrupt entries
* Language files updated to remove more hard-coded "Wikipedia" strings

== Version 1.2.5, 2004-05-01 ==
* Fixed install problem with blank root password
* Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
* Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
* Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
* Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
* IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
* Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack

== Version 1.2.4, 2004-04-13 ==

* Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
* Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
* Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
* Backported optional open proxy blocker
* Backported $wgWhitelistRead
* $wgCapitalLinks option to force full case sensitivity in titles
* Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
* Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the "die()" call to use)

== Version 1.2.3, 2004-04-02 ==

* Fixed an in-place install bug with non-root MySQL user
* Fixed history diff checkboxes bug on titles with ampersands
* Fixed printable link bug on special pages with parameters
* Fixed bug that broke IP blocking w/o memcached
* Turns off E_NOTICE warnings if PHP settings have them on
  (you can grope in and turn this off if you like to debug)

== Version 1.2.2, 2004-03-28 ==

* Fixed an upgrade bug introduced in 1.2.1.
* Disabled $wgUseCategoryMagic, which feature is incomplete broken

== Version 1.2.1, 2004-03-27 ==

Installation, compatibility, security fixlets:
* Detect use of PHP as CGI and disable index.php/Title URLs
* Try to auto-create math tmp & output directories if not present
* Disable Asksql in default install ($wgAllowSysopQueries)
* Better handling of get_magic_quotes_gpc (apostrophe problems)
* French localisation no longer hard-codes "Wikipedia" name

== Version 1.2.0 ==

New features in 1.2:
* Image resizing/thumbnail generation
* Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
* More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
* Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
  may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
  (The exact details of this may change in the future)
* Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
* Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
* Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
* Page rendering cache (experimental)
* Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies
  (off by default in user preferences)
* Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
* It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki.
  An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat"
  privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install.

Fixes and tweaks:
* Now works with register_globals off!
* Works with short tags disabled.
* Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
  $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
  for a slight rendering speed boost.
* rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or
  overwrite everything.
* Various bug fixes.
* Other stuff we forgot.
* Documentation more out of date than ever before!

=== Behavior changes ===

* wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php
  The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't
  conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
* Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in
  DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
* Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can
  be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you
  don't want the performance hit.

=== Database changes ===

An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
(patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).

Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
(patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).


== Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==

This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
release.

New features in 1.1:
* New wiki table syntax:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
* User-editable interface messages:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
* XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
  (There is not yet an import function!)
* "Magic words"

Fixes and tweaks:
* linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
* Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
* Login gives warning about missing cookies
* Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
* Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
* Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
* Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
* Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
* Various exciting new profiling options.
* Debug log is off by default.
* Various small bugs fixed.

Internal changes:
* wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
  is not actually used so far.
* Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
  but disabled.
* Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.

New translations:
* fi - Finnish
* ia - Interlingua
* no - Norwegian
* sk - Slovak
* ta - Tamil

=== Database changes ===

"linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.

Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:

== mediawiki-20031118 ==

* Image deletion fixed.
* Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
  (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
* Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
* Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.

== mediawiki-20031117 ==

* SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
* Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
* Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
  to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
  password cookies.
* Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
* Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
* Check existence of source page before performing a move.
* Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
* Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
* Updates to some translations.
* Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
* Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
* Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
* install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
  added compatibility functions that might or might not help

No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.


== mediawiki-20031107 ==

* Fixed various bugs!
* Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
* Limited support for memcached (see below)
* New translations (see below)
* Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
* Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
  the db is locked or the page is protected.
* Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
* Optional support for blocking usernames
* Uploads disabled by default (see below)


=== Security note ===

Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
you can reenable uploads by putting:

  $wgDisableUploads = false;

into LocalSettings.php.

Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.

As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:

  <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
     # Ignore .htaccess files
     AllowOverride None
     
     # Serve HTML as plaintext
     AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
     
     # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
     php_admin_flag engine off
     
     # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
  </Directory>


=== Database updates ===

If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
be made automatically.

To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:

  archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
  archives/patch-interwiki.sql
  archives/patch-indexes.sql
  interwiki.sql

To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:

  wikipedia-interwiki.sql


=== Translations ===

New interface localization files are included for:
  fy Frisian
  ro Romanian
  sl Slovene
  sq Albanian
  sr Serbian


=== Memcached ===

Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
UTF-8 conversion tables.

MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
minimal overhead.

To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.

Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)

To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
when this option is turned on.


=== 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://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide


=== Mailing list ===

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

  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l


=== UseModWiki import script ===

A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
does function for the brave and pure of heart.


=== Test suite removed ===

The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.


== mediawiki-20030829 ==

First release under MediaWiki name.