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 1.15.2

(bug 20239) MediaWiki:Imagemaxsize does not contain anymore a
tag which was displayed to the user
(bug 21150) SQLite no longer raise an error when deleting files

Changes since 1.15.1

Installer now includes a check for a data corruption issue with certain versions of libxml2 2.7 and PHP earlier than 5.2.9.

MediaWiki 1.15.1

July 14, 2009

This is a security and bugfix release of the the 2009 Q2 branch of MediaWiki.

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 developments 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: Download from SVN

Changes since 1.15.0

Fixed fatal errors for unusual file repository configurations, such as ForeignAPIRepo.
Fixed the "change password" link on Special:Preferences to have the correct returnto parameter.
(bug 19693) Fixed cross-site scripting vulnerability in Special:Block

Changes since 1.15.0rc1

Removed category redirect feature, implementation was incomplete.
(bug 18846) Remove update_password_format(), unnecessary, destroys all passwords if a wiki with $wgPasswordSalt=false is upgraded with the web installer.
(bug 19127) Documentation warning for PostgreSQL users who run update.php: use the same user in AdminSettings.php as in LocalSettings.php.
Fixed possible web invocation of some maintenance scripts, due to the use of include() instead of require(). A full exploit would require a very strange web server configuration.
Localisation updates.

Configuration changes in 1.15

Added $wgNewPasswordExpiry, to specify an expiry time (in seconds) to temporary passwords
Added $wgUseTwoButtonsSearchForm to choose the Search form behavior/look
Added $wgNoFollowDomainExceptions to allow exempting particular domain names from rel="nofollow" on external links
(bug 12970) Brought back $wgUseImageResize.
Added $wgRedirectOnLogin to allow specifying a specifc page to redirect users to upon logging in (ex: "Main Page")
Add $wgExportFromNamespaces for enabling/disabling the "export all from namespace" option (disabled by default)

New features in 1.15

(bug 2242) Add an expiry time to temporary passwords
(bug 9947) Add PROTECTIONLEVEL parser function to return the protection level for the current page for a given action
(bug 17002) Add &minor= and &summary= as parameters in the url when editing, to automatically add a summary or a minor edit.
(bug 16852) padleft and padright now accept multiletter pad characters
When using 'UserCreateForm' hook to add new checkboxes into Special:UserLogin/signup, the messages can now contain HTML to allow hyperlinking to the site's Terms of Service page, for example
Add new hook 'UserLoadFromDatabase' that is called while loading a user from the database.
(bug 17045) Options on the block form are prefilled with the options of the existing block when modifying an existing block.
(bug 17055) "(show/hide)" links to Special:RevisionDelete now use a CSS class rather than hardcoded HTML tags
Added new hook 'WantedPages::getSQL' into SpecialWantedpages.php to allow extensions to alter the SQL query which is used to get the list of wanted pages
(bugs 16957/16969) Add show/hide to preferences for RC patrol options on specialpages
(bug 11443) Auto-noindex user/user talk pages for blocked user
(bug 11644) Add $wgMaxRedirects variable to control how many redirects are recursed through until the "destination" page is reached.
Add $wgInvalidRedirectTargets variable to prevent redirects to certain special pages.
Use HTML5 rel attributes for some links, where appropriate
Added optional alternative Search form look - Go button & Advanced search link instead of Go button & Search button
(bug 2314) Add links to user custom CSS and JS to Special:Preferences
More helpful error message on raw page access if PHP_SELF isn't set
(bug 13040) Gender switch in user preferences
(bug 13040) magic word for interface messages
(bug 3301) Optionally sort user list according to account creation time
Remote description pages for foreign file repos are now fetched in the content language.
(bug 17180) If $wgUseFileCache is enabled, $wgShowIPinHeader is automatically set to false.
(bug 16604) Mark non-patrolled edits in feeds with "!"
(bug 16604) Show title/rev in IRC for patrol log
(bug 16854) Whether a page is being parsed as a preview or section preview can now be determined and set with ParserOptions.
Wrap message 'confirmemail_pending' into a div with CSS classes "error" and "mw-confirmemail-pending"
(bug 8249) The magic words for namespaces and pagenames can now be used as parser functions to return the desired namespace or normalized title/title part for a given title.
(bug 17110) Styled #mw-data-after-content in cologneblue.css to match the rest of the font
(bug 7556) Time zone names in signatures lack i18n
(bug 3311) Automatic category redirects
(bug 17236) Suppress 'watch user page link' for IP range blocks
Wrap message 'searchresulttext' (Special:Search) into a div with class "mw-searchresult"
(bug 15283) Interwiki imports can now fetch included templates
Treat svn:// URLs as external links by default
New function to convert namespace text for display (only applies on wiki with LanguageConverter class)
(bug 17379) Contributions-title is now parsed for magic words.
Preprocessor output now cached in memcached.
(bug 14468) Lines in classic RecentChanges and Watchlist have classes "mw-line-odd" and "mw-line-even" to make styling using css possible.
(bug 17311) Add a note beside the gender selection menu to tell users that this information will be public
Localize time zone regions in Special:Preferences
Add NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS magic word, which is like NUMBEROFUSERS, but uses the active users data from site_stats.
Add a <link rel="canonical"> tag on redirected page views
Replace hardcoded '...' as indication of a truncation with the 'ellipsis' message
Wrap warning message 'editinginterface' into a div with class 'mw-editinginterface'
(bug 17497) Oasis opendocument added to mime.types
Remove the link to Special:FileDuplicateSearch from the "file history" section of image description pages as the list of duplicated files is shown in the next section anyway.
Added $wgRateLimitsExcludedIPs, to allow specific IPs to be whitelisted from rate limits.
(bug 14981) Shared repositories can now have display names, located at Mediawiki:Shared-repo-name-REPONAME, where REPONAME is the name in $wgForeignFileRepos
Special:ListUsers: Sort list of usergroups by alphabet
(bug 16762) Special:Movepage now shows a list of subpages when possible
(bug 17585) Hide legend on Special:Specialpages from non-privileged users
Added $wgUseTagFilter to control enabling of filter-by-change-tag
(bug 17291) MediaWiki:Nocontribs now has an optional $1 parameter for the username
Wrap special page summary message '$specialPageName-summary' into a div with class 'mw-specialpage-summary'
$wgSummarySpamRegex added to handle edit summary spam. This is used *instead* of $wgSpamRegex for edit summary checks. Text checks still use $wgSpamRegex.
New function to convert content text to specified language (only applies on wiki with LanguageConverter class)
(bug 17844) Redirect users to a specific page when they log in, see $wgRedirectOnLogin
Added a link to Special:UserRights on Special:Contributions for privileged users
(bug 10336) Added new magic word Baris6161TURK, which displays the editor of the displayed revision's author user name
LinkerMakeExternalLink now has an $attribs parameter for link attributes and a $linkType parameter for the type of external link being made
(bug 17785) Dynamic dates surrounded with a <span> tag, fixing sortable tables with dynamic dates.
(bug 4582) Provide preference-based autoformatting of unlinked dates with the dateformat parser function.
(bug 17886) Special:Export now allows you to export a whole namespace (limited to 5000 pages)
(bug 17714) Limited TIFF upload support now built in if 'tif' extension is enabled. Image width and height are now recognized, and when using ImageMagick, optional flattening to PNG or JPEG for inline display can be enabled by setting $wgTiffThumbnailType
Renamed two input IDs on Special:Log from 'page' and 'user' to 'mw-log-page' and 'mw-log-user', respectively
Added $wgInvalidUsernameCharacters to disallow certain characters in usernames during registration (such as "@")
Added $wgUserrightsInterwikiDelimiter to allow changing the delimiter used in Special:UserRights to denote the user should be searched for on a different database
Add a class if 'missingsummary' is triggered to allow styling of the summary line

Bug fixes in 1.15

(bug 16968) Special:Upload no longer throws useless warnings.
(bug 17000) Special:RevisionDelete now checks if the database is locked before trying to delete the edit.
(bug 16852) padleft and padright now handle multibyte characters correctly
(bug 17010) maintenance/namespaceDupes.php now add the suffix recursively if the destination page exists
(bug 17035) Special:Upload now fails gracefully if PHP's file_uploads has been disabled
Fixing the caching issue by using -{T|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with LanguageConverter class)
Improving the efficiency by using -{A|xxx}- syntax (only applies on wiki with LanguageConverter class)
(bug 17054) Added more descriptive errors in Special:RevisionDelete
(bug 11527) Diff on page with one revision shows "Next" link to same diff
(bug 8065) Fix summary forcing for new pages
(bug 10569) redirects to Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk are no longer allowed by default. Change $wgInvalidRedirectTargets to re-enable.
(bug 3043) Feed links of given page are now preceded by standard feed icon
(bug 17150) escapeLike now escapes literal \ properly
Inconsistent use of sysop, admin, administrator in system messages changed to 'administrator'
(bug 14423) Check block flag validity for block logging
DB transaction and slave-lag avoidance tweaks for Email Notifications
(bug 17104) Removed [Mark as patrolled] link for already patrolled revisions
(bug 17106) Added 'redirect=no' and 'mw-redirect' class to redirects at "user contributions"
Rollback links on new pages removed from "user contributions"
(bug 15811) Re-upload form tweaks: license fields removed, destination locked, comment label uses better message
Whole HTML validation ($wgValidateAllHtml) now works with external tidy
Parser tests no longer fail when $wgExternalLinkTarget is set in LocalSettings
(bug 15391) catch DBQueryErrors on external storage insertion. This avoids error messages on save were the edit in fact is saved.
(bug 17184) Remove duplicate "z" accesskey in MonoBook
Parser tests no longer fail when $wgAlwaysUseTidy is set in LocalSettings.php
Removed redundant dupe warnings on reupload for the same title. Dupe warnings for identical files at different titles are still given.
Add 'change tagging' facility, where changes can be tagged internally with certain designations, which are displayed on various summaries of changes, and the entries can be styled with CSS.
(bug 17207) Fix regression breaking category page display on PHP 5.1
Categoryfinder utility class no longer fails on invalid input or gives wrong results for category names that include pseudo-namespaces
(bug 17252) Galician numbering format
(bug 17146) Fix for UTF-8 and short word search for some possible MySQL configs
(bug 7480) Internationalize database error message
(bug 16555) Number of links to mediawiki.org scaled back on post-installation
(bug 14938) Removing a section no longer leaves excess whitespace
(bug 17304) Fixed fatal error when thumbnails couldn't be generated for file history
(bug 17283) Remove double URL escaping in show/hide links for log entries and RevisionDeleteForm::__construct
(bug 17105) Numeric table sorting broken
(bug 17231) Transcluding special pages on wikis using language conversion no longer affects the page title
(bug 6702) Default system messages updated/improved
(bug 17190) User ID on preference page no longer has delimeters
(bug 17341) "Powered by MediaWiki" should be on the left on RTL wikis
(bug 17404) "userrights-interwiki" right was missing in User::$mCoreRights
(bug 7509) Separation strings should be configurable
(bug 17420) Send the correct content type from action=raw when the HTML file cache is enabled.
(bug 12746) Do not allow new password e-mails when wiki is in read-only mode
(bug 17478) Fixed a PHP Strict standards error in maintenance/cleanupWatchlist.php
(bug 17488) RSS/Atom links in left toolbar are now localized in classic skin
(bug 17472) use print <<<EOF in maintenance/importTextFile.php
Special:PrefixIndex: Move table styling to shared.css, add CSS IDs to tables use correct message 'allpagesprefix' for input form label, replace _ with ' ' in next page link
(bug 17506) Exceptions within exceptions now respect $wgShowExceptionDetails
Fixed excessive job queue utilisation
File dupe messages for remote repos are now shown only once.
(bug 14980) Messages 'shareduploadwiki' and 'shareduploadwiki-desc' are now used as a parameter in 'sharedupload' for easier styling and customization.
(bug 17482) Formatting error in Special:Preferences#Misc (Opera)
(bug 17556) <link> parameters in Special:Contributions feeds (RSS and Atom) now point to the actual contributors' feed.
ForeignApiRepos now fetch MIME types, rather than trying to figure it locally
Special:Import: Do not show input field for import depth if $wgExportMaxLinkDepth == 0
(bug 17570) $wgMaxRedirects is now correctly respected when following redirects (was previously one more than $wgMaxRedirects)
(bug 16335) magic word to suppress new section link.
(bug 17581) Wrong index name in PostgreSQL's updater: was rc_timestamp_nobot, changed to rc_timestamp_bot
(bug 17437) Fixed incorrect link to web-based installer
(bug 17538) Use shorter URLs in <link> elements
(bug 13778) Hidden input added to the search form so that using the Enter key on IE will do a fulltext search like clicking the button does
(bug 1061) CSS-added icons next to links display through the text and makes it unreadable in RTL
Special:Wantedtemplates now works on PostgreSQL
(bug 14414) maintenance/updateSpecialPages.php no longer throws error with PostgreSQL
(bug 17546) Correct Tongan language native name is "lea faka-Tonga"
(bug 17621) Special:WantedFiles has no link to Special:Whatlinkshere
(bug 17460) Client ecoding is now correctly set for PostgreSQL
(bug 17648) Prevent floats from intruding into edit area in previews if no toolbar present
(bug 17692) Added (list of members) link to 'user' in Special:Listgrouprights
(bug 17707) Show file destination as plain text if &wpForReUpload=1
(bug 10172) Moved setting of "changed since last visit" flags out of the job queue
(bug 17761) "show/hide" link in page history in now works for the first displayed revision if it's not the current one
(bug 17722) Fix regression where users are unable to change temporary passwords
(bug 17799) Special:Random no longer throws a database error when a non-namespace is given, silently falls back to NS_MAIN
(bug 17751) The message for bad titles in WantedPages is now localized
(bug 17860) Moving a page in the "MediaWiki" namespace using SuppressRedirect no longer corrupts the message cache
(bug 17900) Fixed User Groups interface log display after saving groups.
(bug 17897) Fixed string offset error in <pre> tags
(bug 17778) MediaWiki:Catseparator can now have HTML entities
(bug 17676) Error on Special:ListFiles when using Postgres
Special:Export doesn't use raw SQL queries anymore
(bug 14771) Thumbnail links to individual DjVu pages have two no longer have two "page" parameters
(bug 17972) Special:FileDuplicateSearch form now works correctly on wikis that don't use PathInfo or short urls
(bug 17990) trackback.php now has a trackback.php5 alias and works with $wgScriptExtension
(bug 14990) Parser tests works again with PostgreSQL
(bug 11487) Special:Protectedpages doesn't list protections with pr_expiry IS NULL
(bug 18018) Deleting a file redirect leaves behind a malfunctioning redirect
(bug 17537) Disable bad zlib.output_compression output on HTTP 304 responses
(bug 11213) [edit] section links in printable version no longer appear when you cut-and-paste article text
(bug 17405) "Did you mean" to mirror Go/Search behavior of original request
(bug 18116) 'edittools' is now output identically on edit and upload pages
(bug 17241) The diffonly URI parameter should cascade to "Next edit" and "Previous edit" diff links
(bug 16823) 'Sidebar search form should not use Special:Search view URL as target'
(bug 16343) Non-existing, but in use, category pages can be "go" match hits
Fixed the circular template inclusion check, was broken when the loop involved redirects. Without this, infinite recursion within the parser is possible.
(bug 17611) Provide a sensible error message on install when the SQLite data directory is wrong.
(bug 16937) Fixed PostgreSQL installation on Windows, workaround for upstream pg_version() bug.
(bug 11451) Fix upgrade from MediaWiki 1.2 or earlier (imagelinks schema).
Fixed SQLite indexes, installation and upgrade. Reintroduced it as an option to the installer.
(bug 18170) Fixed a PHP warning in Parser::preSaveTransform() in PHP 5.3
(bug 8873) Enable variant conversion in text on 'alt' and 'title' attributes

API changes in 1.15

(bug 16858) Revamped list=deletedrevs to make listing deleted contributions and listing all deleted pages possible
(bug 16844) Added clcategories parameter to prop=categories
(bug 17025) Add "fileextension" parameter to meta=siteinfo&siprop=
(bug 17048) Show the 'new' flag in list=usercontribs for the revision that created the page, even if it's not the top revision
(bug 17069) Added ucshow=patrolled|!patrolled to list=usercontribs
action=delete respects $wgDeleteRevisionsLimit and the bigdelete user right
(bug 15949) Add undo functionality to action=edit
(bug 16483) Kill filesort in ApiQueryBacklinks caused by missing parentheses. Building query properly now using makeList()
(bug 17182) Fix pretty printer so URLs with parentheses in them are autolinked correctly
(bug 17224) Added siprop=rightsinfo to meta=siteinfo
(bug 17239) Added prop=displaytitle to action=parse
(bug 17317) Added watch parameter to action=protect
(bug 17007) Added export and exportnowrap parameters to action=query
(bug 17326) BREAKING CHANGE: Changed output format for iiprop=metadata
(bug 17355) Added auwitheditsonly parameter to list=allusers
(bug 17007) Added action=import
BREAKING CHANGE: Removed rctitles parameter from list=recentchanges because of performance concerns
Listing (semi-)deleted revisions and log entries as well in prop=revisions and list=logevents
(bug 11430) BREAKING CHANGE: Modules may return fewer results than the limit and still set a query-continue in some cases
(bug 17357) Added movesubpages parameter to action=move
(bug 17433) Added bot flag to list=watchlist&wlprop=flags output
(bug 16740) Added list=protectedtitles
Added mainmodule and pagesetmodule parameters to action=paraminfo
(bug 17502) meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespacealiases no longer lists namespace aliases already listed in siprop=namespaces
(bug 17529) rvend ignored when rvstartid is specified
(bug 17626) Added uiprop=email to list=userinfo
(bug 13209) Added rvdiffto parameter to prop=revisions
Manual language conversion improve: Now we can include both ";" and ":" in conversion rules
(bug 17795) Don't report views count on meta=siteinfo if $wgDisableCounters is set
(bug 17774) Don't hide read-restricted modules like action=query from users without read rights, but throw an error when they try to use them.
Don't hide write modules when $wgEnableWriteAPI is false, but throw an error when someone tries to use them
BREAKING CHANGE: action=purge requires write rights and, for anonymous users, a POST request
(bug 18099) Using appendtext to edit a non-existent page causes an interface message to be included in the page text
(bug 18601) generator=backlinks returns invalid continue parameter
(bug 18597) Internal error with empty generator= parameter
(bug 18617) Add xml:space="preserve" attribute to relevant tags in XML output

Languages updated in 1.15

MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of MediaZilla reports.

Austrian German (de-at) (new)
Swiss Standard German (de-ch) (new)
Simplified Gan Chinese (gan-hans) (new)
Traditional Gan Chinese (gan-hant) (new)
Literary Chinese (lzh) (new)
Uyghur (Latin script) (ug-latn) (renamed from 'ug')
Veps (vep) (new)
Võro (vro) (renamed from fiu-vro)
(bug 17151) Add magic word alias for #redirect for Vietnamese
(bug 17288) Messages improved for default language (English)
(bug 12937) Update native name for Afar
(bug 16909) 'histlegend' now reuses messages instead of copying them
(bug 17832) action=delete returns 'unknownerror' instead of 'permissiondenied' when the user is blocked
Traditional/Simplified Gan Chinese conversion support

Compatibility

MediaWiki 1.15 requires PHP 5 (5.2 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

1.15 has several database changes since 1.14, and will not work without schema updates.

If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to database schema changes.

If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure new database fields are filled with data.

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 1.14.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Online documentation

Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain) :

Documentation

Mailing list

A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia wikitech-l list: mail:mediawiki-l A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available: mail: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