Release notes/1.26

= MediaWiki release notes =

Security reminder: If you have PHP's register_globals option set, you must turn it off. MediaWiki will not work with it enabled.

Configuration changes

 * $wgPasswordResetRoutes['email'] = true by default.
 * $wgEnableParserCache was deprecated, set $wgParserCacheType to CACHE_NONE instead if you want to disable the parser cache.
 * New-style continuation is now the default for API action=continue. Clients may use the 'rawcontinue' parameter to receive raw query-continue data, but the new style is encouraged as it's harder to implement incorrectly.
 * Deprecated API formats dump and wddx have been completely removed.
 * (T7645) The "Signature" button on the edit toolbar is now hidden by default in non-talk namespaces. A new configuration variable, $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, controls in which subject (non-talk) namespaces the "Signature" button on the edit toolbar will be displayed.
 * $wgResourceLoaderUseESI was deprecated and removed. This was an experimental feature that was never enabled by default.
 * $wgResourceLoaderExperimentalAsyncLoading was deprecated and removed. This experimental feature was never enabled by default and is obsolete as of MediaWiki 1.26, in where ResourceLoader became fully asynchronous.
 * $wgMasterWaitTimeout was removed (deprecated in 1.24).
 * Fields in ParserOptions are now private. Use the accessors instead.
 * Custom LESS functions (defined via $wgResourceLoaderLESSFunctions) have been removed, after being deprecated in 1.24.
 * $wgAlwaysUseTidy has been removed.

New features

 * (T51506) Now action=info gives estimates of actual watchers for a page. See $wgRCMaxAge, $wgWatchersMaxAge and $wgUnwatchedPageSecret to learn how to configure if needed.
 * Change tags can now be hidden in the interface by disabling the associated "tag-  " interface message.
 * ':' (colon) is now invalid in usernames for new accounts. Existing accounts are not affected.
 * Added a new hook, 'LogException', to log exceptions in nonstandard ways.
 * Revive the 'SpecialSearchResultsAppend' hook which occurs after the list of search results are rendered. The initial use case is to append a "give us feedback" link beneath the search results.
 * Added a new hook, 'RejectParserCacheValue', which allows extensions to reject an otherwise-successful parser cache lookup. The intent is to allow extensions to manage the eviction of archaic HTML output from the cache.
 * (T68699) The expiration of the UserID and Token login cookies ($wgExtendedLoginCookieExpiration) can be configured independently of the expiration of all other cookies ($wgCookieExpiration).
 * (T50519) Support for generating JPEG/PNG thumbnails from WebP images added if ImageMagick is used as image scaler ($wgUseImageMagick = true). Uploading of WebP images still disabled by default. Add $wgFileExtensions[] = 'webp'; to LocalSettings.php to enable uploading of WebP images.
 * Added new hooks 'EnhancedChangesListModifyLineData' & 'EnhancedChangesListModifyBlockLineData', to modify the data used to build lines in enhanced recentchanges and watchlist.
 * Caches that need purging ability now use the WANObjectCache interface. This corresponds to a new $wgMainWANCache setting, which defaults to using the $wgMainCacheType settings.
 * Callers needing fast light-weight data stores use $wgMainStash to select the store type from $wgObjectCaches. The default is the local database.
 * Interface message overrides in the MediaWiki namespace will now be cached in memcached and APC (if available), rather than memcached and local files.
 * Added a new hook, 'RandomPageQuery', to allow modification of the query used by Special:Random to select random pages.
 * $wgTransactionalTimeLimit was added, which controls the request time limit for potentially slow POST requests that need to be as atomic as possible.
 * ResourceLoader now loads all scripts asynchronously. The top-queue and startup modules are no longer synchronously loaded.
 * 'mediawiki.ui.button' styles are no longer unconditionally loaded on every page. During the deprecation period, the styles will only be loaded on pages which contain 'mw-ui-button' in their HTML. Starting in 1.28, the styles will only be loaded if explicitly required.

External libraries

 * Update es5-shim from v4.0.0 to v4.1.5.
 * Update json2 from revision 2014-02-04 to 2015-05-03.
 * Update Sinon.JS from 1.10.3 to 1.15.4.
 * Upgrade jQuery Client from v1.0.0 to v2.0.0.
 * Added mediawiki/at-ease 1.0.0.
 * Update QUnit from v1.17.1 to v1.18.0.

Bug fixes

 * (T53283) load.php sometimes sends 304 response without full headers
 * (T65198) Talk page tabs now have a "rel=discussion" attribute
 * (T98841) now preserves comments even when subst: is not used.
 * (T104142) $wgEmergencyContact and $wgPasswordSender now use their default value if set to an empty string.

Action API changes

 * New-style continuation is now the default for action=continue. Clients may use the 'rawcontinue' parameter to receive raw query-continue data, but the new style is encouraged as it's harder to implement incorrectly.
 * Deprecated API formats dump and wddx have been completely removed.
 * API action=query&list=tags: The displayname can now be boolean false if the tag is meant to be hidden from user interfaces.
 * action=import no longer allows both the namespace= and rootpage= parameters to be set. If they are both set, the value of rootpage= will be ignored.
 * prop=revision output in enum mode is now sorted by timestamp rather than revision ID. This usually won't make any difference.
 * (T102645) Namespace list from meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespaces is now an array with formatversion=2.
 * Various other output from meta=siteinfo will now always be arrays instead of sometimes being numerically-indexed objects with formatversion=2.
 * When errors about users being blocked are returned, they now include information about the relevant block.
 * (T99926) list=random has higher limits, in line with other API modules.
 * list=random's rnredirect parameter is deprecated in favor of a new rnfilterredir parameter that also allows for listing both redirects and non-redirects.
 * list=random now supports continuation.
 * API responses to GET requests may now include ETag and Last-Modified headers, and will honor corresponding If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since on such requests.

Action API internal changes

 * New metadata item ApiResult::META_KVP_MERGE to allow for merging the KVP key into the value when the value is an assoc.
 * API action modules may now provide values for the RFC 7232 ETag and Last-Modified headers. The API will check these against If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since request headers on GET requests and avoid executing the module when appropriate.

Languages updated
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.


 * Languages added:
 * ase (American sign language), thanks to translator Icemandeaf
 * dty (डोटेली/Doteli), thanks to translators जनक राज भट्ट, बिप्लब आनन्द, मेश सिंह बोहरा, and राम प्रसाद जोशी
 * luz (لئری دوٙمینی / Southern Luri)

Other changes

 * ChangeTags::tagDescription will return false if the interface message for the tag is disabled.
 * Added PageHistoryPager::doBatchLookups hook.
 * Added $wikiId parameter to FormatAutocomments hook.
 * Added ParserCacheSaveComplete to ParserCache
 * supportsDirectEditing and supportsDirectApiEditing methods added to ContentHandler, to provide a way for ApiEditPage and EditPage to check if direct editing of content is allowed. These methods return false, by default for the ContentHandler base class and true for TextContentHandler and it's derivative classes (everything in core). For Content types that do not support direct editing, an alternative mechanism should be provided for editing, such as action overrides or specific api modules.
 * mediaWiki.confirmCloseWindow now returns an object of functions, instead of one function. The callback can't be called directly any more. The callback function is replaced with confirmCloseWindow.release.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: Added an optional ResouceLoaderContext parameter to ResourceLoaderModule::getDependencies. Extension classes that override that method should be updated. If they aren't updated, PHP Strict standards warnings will appear when E_STRICT error reporting is enabled. Note: in the near future, this parameter will probably become non-optional.
 * Removed maintenance script deleteImageMemcached.php.
 * MWFunction::newObj was removed (deprecated in 1.25). ObjectFactory::getObjectFromSpec should be used instead.
 * The parser will no longer randomize the string it uses to mark the place of items that were stripped during parsing. It will use a fixed string instead. This causes the parser to re-use the regular expressions it uses to search and replace markers rather than generate novel expressions on each parse. Re-using regular expressions will improve performance on HHVM and the forthcoming PHP 7. The interfaces changes accompanying this change are:
 * - Parser::getRandomString and Parser::uniqPrefix have been deprecated.
 * - The $uniq_prefix argument for Parser::extractTagsAndParams and the $prefix argument for StripState::_construct are deprecated and their value is ignored.
 * wfSuppressWarnings and wfRestoreWarnings were split into a separate library, mediawiki/at-ease, and are now deprecated. Callers should use MediaWiki\suppressWarnings and MediaWiki\restoreWarnings directly.
 * The Block class constructor now takes an associative array of parameters instead of many optional positional arguments. Calling the constructor the old way will issue a deprecation warning.
 * The jquery.mwExtension module was deprecated.
 * $wgSpecialPageGroups was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 * SpecialPageFactory::setGroup was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 * SpecialPageFactory::getGroup was removed (deprecated in 1.21).
 * DatabaseBase::ignoreErrors is now protected.
 * BREAKING CHANGE: mediawiki.legacy.ajax has been removed, following a lengthy deprecation period.
 * The ScopedPHPTimeout class was removed.
 * Removed maintenance script fixSlaveDesync.php.
 * Watchlist tokens, SpecialResetTokens, and User::getTokenFromOption are deprecated. Applications using those can work via the OAuth extension instead. New tokens types should not be added.
 * DatabaseBase::errorCount was removed (unused).

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.26 requires PHP 5.3.3 or later. There is experimental support for HHVM 3.3.0.

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
1.26 has several database changes since 1.25, 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 1.25.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.