Release notes/1.24

= MediaWiki release notes =

Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals. If you have it on, turn it off if you can.

MediaWiki 1.24
THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET MediaWiki 1.24 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in production.

Configuration changes in 1.24

 * The server's canonical hostname is available as $wgServerName, which is exposed in both mw.config and ApiQuerySiteInfo.
 * Introduced $wgPagePropsHaveSortkey as a backwards-compatibility switch, for using the old schema of the page_props table, in case the respective schema update was not applied.

New features in 1.24

 * Added a new hook, "WhatLinksHereProps", to allow extensions to annotate WhatLinksHere entries.
 * Added a new hook, "ContentGetParserOutput", to customize parser output for a given content object.
 * Deprecated the hook "ShowRawCssJs", use "ContentGetParserOutput" instead.
 * HTMLForm's HTMLTextField now supports the 'url' type.
 * HTMLForm fields may now be dynamically hidden based on the values of other fields in the form.
 * HTMLForm now supports multiple copies of an input field or set of input fields, e.g. the form may request "one or more usernames" without having to have the user enter delimited list of names into a text field.
 * Added a new hook, "SidebarBeforeOutput", to allow to edit the structure of the sidebar just before its display.
 * (bug 49156) Added the mediawiki.cookie ResourceLoader module, which wraps jQuery.cookie so that getting/setting a cookie is syntactically and functionally similar to using the WebRequest#getCookie/WebResponse#setcookie methods.
 * (bug 44740) jQuery upgraded from 1.8.3 to 1.11.1.
 * Changes to content typography (fonts, etc.). See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh for further information.
 * WikitextContent will now render redirects with the expected "redirect" header, rather than as an ordered list. Code calling Article::viewRedirect can probably be changed to no longer special-case redirects.
 * (bug 63903) Thumbnails without an explicit size specification are now resized to a square bounding box. This gives better results for non-landscape thumbnails.

Bug fixes in 1.24

 * (bug 49116) Footer copyright notice is now always displayed in user language rather than content language (same as copyright notice for editing interface).
 * (bug 62258) A bug was fixed in File::getUnscaledThumb when a height restriction was present in the parameters. Images with both the "frame" option and a size specification set will now always ignore the provided size and display an unscaled image, as the documentation has always claimed it would.
 * (bug 39035) Improved Vector skin performance by removing collapsibleNav, which used to collapse some sidebar elements by default. This removes -list id suffixes like p-lang-list: instead of using things like #p-lang-list, you can do #p-lang .body ul.
 * (bug 890) Links in Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist no longer follow redirects to their target pages.
 * Parser now dies early if called recursively, instead of producing subtle bugs.
 * (bug 14323) Redirect pages, when viewed with redirect=no, no longer hide the remaining page content.

Web API changes in 1.24

 * action=parse API now supports prop=modules, which provides the list of ResourceLoader modules that should be used to enhance the parsed content.
 * action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap returns a new "protorel" field which is true iff protocol-relative urls can be used to access a particular interwiki map entry.

Languages updated in 1.24
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 Bugzilla reports.

Other changes in 1.24

 * The deprecated jquery.delayedBind ResourceLoader module was removed.
 * The deprecated function mw.util.toggleToc was removed.
 * The Special:Search hooks SpecialSearchGo and SpecialSearchResultsAppend were removed as they were unused.
 * (bug 65477) User::pingLimiter now has an additional profile point varying by action being used.
 * mediawiki.util.$content no longer supports old versions of the Vector, Monobook, Modern and CologneBlue skins that don't yet implement the "mw-body" and/or "mw-body-primary" class name in their html.
 * Added pp_sortkey column to page_props table, so pages can be efficiently queried and sorted by property value (bug 58032). See $wgPagePropsHaveSortkey if you want to postpone the schema change.

Renamed classes

 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Expression to CLDRPluralRuleConverterExpression
 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Fragment to CLDRPluralRuleConverterFragment
 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Operator to CLDRPluralRuleConverterOperator
 * CLDRPluralRuleEvaluator_Range to CLDRPluralRuleEvaluatorRange
 * CSSJanus_Tokenizer to CSSJanusTokenizer
 * MediaWiki_I18N to MediaWikiI18N
 * RevDel_ArchiveItem to RevDelArchiveItem
 * RevDel_ArchiveList to RevDelArchiveList
 * RevDel_ArchivedFileItem to RevDelArchivedFileItem
 * RevDel_ArchivedFileList to RevDelArchivedFileList
 * RevDel_ArchivedRevisionItem to RevDelArchivedRevisionItem
 * RevDel_FileItem to RevDelFileItem
 * RevDel_FileList to RevDelFileList
 * RevDel_Item to RevDelItem
 * RevDel_List to RevDelList
 * RevDel_LogItem to RevDelLogItem
 * RevDel_LogList to RevDelLogList
 * RevDel_RevisionItem to RevDelRevisionItem
 * RevDel_RevisionList to RevDelRevisionList
 * WebInstaller_Complete to WebInstallerComplete
 * WebInstaller_Copying to WebInstallerCopying
 * WebInstaller_DBConnect to WebInstallerDBConnect
 * WebInstaller_DBSettings to WebInstallerDBSettings
 * WebInstaller_Document to WebInstallerDocument
 * WebInstaller_ExistingWiki to WebInstallerExistingWiki
 * WebInstaller_Install to WebInstallerInstall
 * WebInstaller_Language to WebInstallerLanguage
 * WebInstaller_Name to WebInstallerName
 * WebInstaller_Options to WebInstallerOptions
 * WebInstaller_Readme to WebInstallerReadme
 * WebInstaller_ReleaseNotes to WebInstallerReleaseNotes
 * WebInstaller_Restart to WebInstallerRestart
 * WebInstaller_Upgrade to WebInstallerUpgrade
 * WebInstaller_UpgradeDoc to WebInstallerUpgradeDoc
 * WebInstaller_Welcome to WebInstallerWelcome

Removed classes

 * IPBlockForm - Use SpecialBlock directly
 * WatchlistEditor - Use SpecialEditWatchlist directly

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.24 requires PHP 5.3.2 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 5.0.2 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
1.24 has several database changes since 1.23, 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 1.21.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/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.