Release notes/1.28

MediaWiki 1.28
THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET

MediaWiki 1.28 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in production.

Configuration changes in 1.28

 * The load.php entry point now enforces the existing policy of not allowing access to session data, which includes the session user and the session user's language. If such access is attempted, an exception will be thrown.

New features in 1.28

 * User::isBot method for checking if an account is a bot role account.
 * Added a new hook, 'UserIsBot', to aid in determining if a user is a bot.

Languages updated in 1.28
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.

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.28 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
1.28 has several database changes since 1.27, 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 1.27.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.