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.
 * $wgSearchEverythingOnlyLoggedIn was removed as the 'searcheverything' user option was removed. Use $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault instead or if you used to have $wgDefaultUserOptions['searcheverything'] = 1.
 * $wgMasterWaitTimeout has been deprecated.
 * $wgDBClusterTimeout has been removed.
 * $wgProxyKey has been removed. It is no longer used by MediaWiki core. Ensure $wgSecretKey is set in LocalSettings.php.
 * $wgExtraInterlanguageLinkPrefixes is a new configuration variable that contains an array of interwiki prefixes that should be treated as language prefixes (i.e. turned into interlanguage links when $wgInterwikiMagic is set to true).

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 and WebResponse::setcookie methods.
 * (bug 44740) jQuery upgraded from 1.8.3 to 1.11.1. A new configuration option, $wgIncludejQueryMigrate, also loads the jQuery Migrate hack to let extensions and gadgets use the long-deprecated functions that were removed in jQuery 1.9. This option is turned off by default, and will be removed in MediaWiki 1.25.
 * (bug 47076) jQuery UI upgraded from 1.8.24 to 1.9.2.
 * 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.
 * Header font set to a serif font stack. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh for further information.
 * (bug 65567) Added a new hook, "BeforeHttpsRedirect", to allow cancellation of the HTTP to HTTPS redirect due to forceHTTPS cookie, userRequires, etc. This is only for page views, since this hook doesn't affect UserLogin, OAuth, CentralAuth, etc. ATTENTION: This hook is likely to be removed soon due to overall design of the system.
 * (bug 17367) It is now possible to add pages to your watchlist from Special:UnwatchedPages without reloading the special page.
 * New methods setVolatile and isVolatile are added to PPFrame, so that extensions such as Cite.php can mark that their output is volatile and shouldn't be cached.
 * (bug 52817) Advanced search options are now saved on the search page itself, rather than in a dedicated pane in the preferences panel.
 * (bug 44591) The dropdown actions menu (little triangle next to page tabs) in the Vector skin has gained a label that should make it more discoverable.
 * MWCryptHKDF added for fast, cryptographically secure random number generation that won't deplete openssl's entropy pool.
 * ResourceLoader: File modules can now provide a skip function that uses an inline feature test to bypass loading of the module.
 * (bug 20210) Special pages may now provide autocompletion of their subpage names in search suggestions. Right now the only useful implementation is in Special:Log, but more are to come.
 * Special:MostLinkedTemplates is no longer limited to transclusions from the Template namespace.
 * Skins can now use 'remoteSkinPath' when defining ResourceLoader modules. This works the same as 'remoteExtPath' but is relative to the skins/ folder instead of the extensions/ folder.

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.
 * (bug 52587) Maintenance script deleteBatch.php no longer follows redirects in the file namespace and delete the file on the target page. It will still however delete the redirect page.
 * (bug 22683) and other uses of PPFrame::RECOVER_ORIG will correctly recover the original code of extension tags.

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.
 * ApiQueryLogEvents now provides logpage, which is the page ID from the logging table, if ids are requested and the user has the permissions.
 * action=edit now requires that appendtext, prependtext, or section=new be used when using the 'redirect' parameter, to prevent clients accidentally overwriting the target page with the content of the redirect.
 * action=logevents will now return an error if both letitle and leprefix are specified.
 * action=logevents has a new parameter, lenamespace, to allow filtering by namespace.
 * action=expandtemplates has a new parameter, prop, and a new output format. The old format is still used if prop isn't provided, but this is deprecated.
 * meta=userinfo can now return the count of unread pages on the watchlist.
 * list=watchlist can now filter by unread status.

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.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: The Modern and Cologne Blue skins were moved out of MediaWiki core to their own respective repositories. See also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Modern and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:CologneBlue.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: Skins built for MediaWiki 1.15 and earlier that do not use the "headelement" template key are no longer supported. Setting $useHeadElement = false; is no longer supported and will not cause old keys like "headlinks", "skinnameclass", etc. to be defined.
 * The deprecated 'SpecialVersionExtensionTypes' hook was removed.
 * (bug 63891) Add 'X-Robots-Tag: noindex' header in action=render pages.
 * SpecialPage no longer supports the syntax for invoking wfSpecial* functions. Special pages should subclass SpecialPage and implement the execute method.
 * (bug 63755) The deprecated constants RC_MOVE and RC_MOVE_OVER_REDIRECT were removed.
 * Special:MostLinkedTemplates has been renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages.
 * The skin autodiscovery mechanism has been deprecated and will be removed in MediaWiki 1.25. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skin_autodiscovery for migration guide for creators and users of custom skins that relied on it.
 * ResourceLoaderFileModule#getAllStyleFiles now returns all style files and all skin style files used by the module.
 * Removed getLang from IContextSource and subclasses. (deprecated since 1.19)
 * Removed WebRequest::escapeAppendQuery. (deprecated since 1.20)

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.