User:Iritscen/WikiFuture

Below are any notable changes that we should look forward to, or watch out for, if upgrading MediaWiki (as well as significant security fixes). (Source)

Oldest maintained LTS version of MediaWiki: 1.35 (supported through September 2023).
Latest LTS version of MediaWiki: 1.39 (supported through November 2025). (Source)

Current version on OniGalore: 1.39.6

You can browse each version of the MW code HERE.

1.39

I have checked the release notes through 1.39.5.

• MediaWiki 1.39 drops PHP 7.3 support, and requires PHP 7.4.3 or above.
• $wgExtraNamespaces no longer overrides canonical namespace names specified in extension.json files. While this setting can still be used to rename extension-defined namespaces, system administrators may need to run namespaceDupes.php after upgrading.
• Administrators now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are (un)deleting a given page.
• {{=}} is now a wikitext built-in magic word, expanding to =. This is conventionally used as an escape mechanism to allow the use of = in unnamed template arguments.

1.40

I have checked the release notes through 1.40.1.

• Requires PHP 7.4.3+ and the PHP extensions ctype, dom, fileinfo, iconv, intl, json, mbstring, xml.
• Special:Search can now show thumbnails for results for titles outside NS_FILE. This is controlled via the new onSearchResultProvideThumbnail hook.
• A new preference ('search-thumbnail-extra-namespaces') to allow users to control whether to show more thumbnails (per $wgThumbnailNamespaces)
• The preferences page now provides a search bar to find preferences, regardless of the tab on which they appear.
• $wgPasswordPolicies – This setting, which controls what makes for a valid password for wiki accounts, has been adjusted to raise the minimal password length from 1 to 8 characters. The initial limit of 1 has been in place since MediaWiki 1.26. If you wish to allow shorter passwords, you can over-ride it in your LocalSettings following the guidance on MediaWiki.org.
• You should configure your webserver to return the http header 'X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff' for the /images directory. This will instruct browsers to not apply content sniffing when accessing the files. MediaWiki before 1.40 shipped with a content sniffer which disallowed potentially dangerous files at upload time, but this protection has now been removed in favor of this 'X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff' header and the installer will return a warning when it is not in place.
• Maintenance scripts should now be executed using maintenance/run.php, e.g. maintenance/run.php update not maintenance/update.php as before.
• Five extensions have now been bundled with MediaWiki:
  • The DiscussionTools extension, which provides a forum-like editing experience for wikitext-based discussion pages. This is the dreaded new "forum-like" experience for talk pages that I don't think any of us will want. It seems like it will be on by default so we'll have to change $wgDiscussionToolsEnable to false. Hopefully it doesn't do anything to mess with talk pages immediately upon install.
  • The Echo extension, which provides a system of user notifications.
  • The Linter extension, which warns about use of deprecated wikitext.
  • The LoginNotify extension, which warns users about failed attempted logins.
  • The Thanks extension, which lets users thank editors for edits.
• The Renameuser extension has been moved to MediaWiki core. It is now possible to rename users without installing an extension. The extension had already been bundled with MediaWiki since 1.18.