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.

New features in 1.24

 * Added a new hook, "WhatLinksHereProps", to allow extensions to annotate WhatLinksHere entries.
 * 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.

Bug fixes in 1.24

 * (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.
 * (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.

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.

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.
 * 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.

Renamed classes

 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Expression to CLDRPluralRuleConverterExpression
 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Fragment to CLDRPluralRuleConverterFragment
 * CLDRPluralRuleConverter_Operator to CLDRPluralRuleConverterOperator
 * CLDRPluralRuleEvaluator_Range to CLDRPluralRuleEvaluatorRange
 * CSSJanus_Tokenizer to CSSJanusTokenizer

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.