Release notes/1.29

MediaWiki 1.29
THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET

MediaWiki 1.29 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in production.

Configuration changes in 1.29

 * Default cookie expiration time has been reduced to 30 days. Login cookie expiration time is kept at 180 days.
 * A new configuration variable has been added: $wgCookieSetOnAutoblock. This determines whether to set a cookie when a user is autoblocked. Doing so means that a blocked user, even after logging out and moving to a new IP address will still be blocked.
 * The resetpassword right and associated password reset capture feature has been removed.
 * The $error parameter to the EmailUser hook should be set to a Status object or boolean false. This should be compatible with at least MediaWiki 1.23 if not earlier. Returning a raw HTML string is now deprecated.
 * The $message parameter to the ApiCheckCanExecute hook should be set to an ApiMessage. This is compatible with MediaWiki 1.27 and later. Returning code for ApiBase::parseMsg will no longer work.
 * ApiBase::$messageMap is no longer public. Code attempting to access it will result in a PHP fatal error.

New features in 1.29

 * (T5233) A cookie can now be set when a user is autoblocked, to track that user if they move to a new IP address. This is disabled by default.

Upgraded external libraries

 * Updated QUnit from v1.22.0 to v1.23.1.

Action API changes in 1.29

 * Submitting sensitive authentication request parameters to action=clientlogin, action=createaccount, action=linkaccount, and action=changeauthenticationdata in the query string is now an error. They should be submitted in the POST body instead.
 * The capture option for action=resetpassword has been removed
 * action=clearhasmsg now requires a POST.
 * (T47843) API errors and warnings may be requested in non-English languages using the new 'errorformat', 'errorlang', and 'errorsuselocal' parameters.
 * API error codes may have changed. Most notably, errors from modules using parameter prefixes (e.g. all query submodules) will no longer be prefixed.
 * action=emailuser may return a "Warnings" status, and now returns 'warnings' and 'errors' subelements (as applicable) instead of 'message'.
 * action=imagerotate returns an 'errors' subelement rather than 'errormessage'.
 * action=move now reports errors when moving the talk page as an array under key 'talkmove-errors', rather than using 'talkmove-error-code' and 'talkmove-error-info'. The format for subpage move errors has also changed.
 * action=revisiondelete no longer includes a "rendered" property on warnings and errors for each item. Use errorformat=wikitext if you're wanting parsed output.
 * action=rollback no longer returns a "messageHtml" property. Use errorformat=html if you're wanting HTML formatting of error messages.
 * action=upload now reports optional stash failures as an array under key 'stasherrors' rather than a 'stashfailed' text string.
 * action=watch reports 'errors' and 'warnings' instead of a single 'error', and no longer returns a 'message' on success.

Action API internal changes in 1.29

 * New methods were added to ApiBase to handle errors and warnings using i18n keys. Methods for using hard-coded English messages were deprecated:
 * ApiBase::dieUsage was deprecated
 * ApiBase::dieUsageMsg was deprecated
 * ApiBase::dieUsageMsgOrDebug was deprecated
 * ApiBase::getErrorFromStatus was deprecated
 * ApiBase::parseMsg was deprecated
 * ApiBase::setWarning was deprecated
 * ApiBase::$messageMap is no longer public. Code attempting to access it will result in a PHP fatal error.
 * The $message parameter to the ApiCheckCanExecute hook should be set to an ApiMessage. This is compatible with MediaWiki 1.27 and later. Returning a code for ApiBase::parseMsg will no longer work.
 * UsageException is deprecated in favor of ApiUsageException. For the time being ApiUsageException is a subclass of UsageException to allow things that catch only UsageException to still function properly.
 * If, for some strange reason, code was using an ApiErrorFormatter instead of ApiErrorFormatter_BackCompat, note that the result format has changed and various methods now take a module path rather than a module name.
 * ApiMessageTrait::getApiCode now strips 'apierror-' and 'apiwarn-' prefixes from the message key, and maps some message keys for backwards compatibility.

Languages updated in 1.29
MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

No fallback for Ukrainian

 * (T39314) The fallback from Ukrainian to Russian was removed. The Ukrainian language will now use the default fallback language: English. When a translation to Ukrainian is not available, an English string will be shown.

Other changes in 1.29

 * Database::getSearchEngine (deprecated in 1.28) was removed. Use SearchEngineFactory::getSearchEngineClass instead.
 * $wgSessionsInMemcached (deprecated in 1.20) was removed. No replacement is required as all sessions are stored in Object Cache now.
 * MWHttpRequest::execute should be considered to return a StatusValue; the Status return type is deprecated.
 * User::edits (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Xml::escapeJsString (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * Article::getText and Article::prepareTextForEdit (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Article::getAutosummary and WikiPage::getAutosummary (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Hooks ArticleViewCustom, EditPageGetDiffText and ShowRawCssJs (deprecated in 1.21) were removed.
 * Class RevisiondeleteAction (deprecated in 1.25) was removed.
 * WikiPage::prepareTextForEdit (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.
 * WikiPage::getText (deprecated in 1.21) was removed.

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.29 requires PHP 5.5.9 or later. There is experimental support for HHVM 3.6.5 or later.

MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

The supported versions are:


 * MySQL 5.0.3 or later
 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)

Upgrading
1.29 has several database changes since 1.28, and will not work without schema updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site, many hours on a large site).

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, you should upgrade to 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed with MediaWiki 1.21.

Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.

For notes on 1.28.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Online documentation
Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available 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):

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Documentation

Mailing list
A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:

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

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

https://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