Wikitech-l October 2013

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

148 participants
148 discussions

How to make commits from mirrored Wikimedia repos show up on your GitHub profile
by Bartosz Dziewoński 27 Jun '24

27 Jun '24

I know it has been annoying a couple of people other than me, so now that I've learned how to make it work I'll share the knowledge here. tl;dr: Star the repositories. No, seriously. (And yes, you need to star each extension repo separately.) (Is there a place on mw.org to put this tidbit on?) ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Brian Levine" <support(a)github.com> (GitHub Staff) To: matma.rex(a)gmail.com Cc: Subject: Re: Commits in mirrored repositories not showing up on my profile Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:47:19 +0200 Hi Bartosz In order to link your commits to your GitHub account, you need to have some association with the repository other than authoring the commit. Usually, having push access gives you that connection. In this case, you don't have push permission, so we don't link you to the commit. The easy solution here is for you to star the repository. If you star it - along with the other repositories that are giving you this problem - we'll see that you're connected to the repository and you'll get contribution credit for those commits. Cheers Brian -- Matma Rex

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People with knowledge of English swear words needed :o
by Petr Bena 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

Are you good in swearing? WE NEED YOU Huggle 3 comes with vandalism-prediction as it is precaching the diffs even before they are enqueued including their contents. Each edit has so called "score" which is a numerical value that if higher, the edit is more likely a vandalism. If you want to help us improve this feature, it is necessary to define a "score words" list for every wiki where huggle is about to be used, for example on English wiki. Each list has following syntax: (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Huggle/Config&diff=573…) score-words(score): list of words separated by comma, can contain newlines but comma must be present example score-words(200): these, are, some, words, which, presence, of, increases, the, score, each, word, by, 200, So, if you know english better than me, which you likely do, go ahead and improve the configuration file there, no worries, huggle's config parser is very syntax-error proof. If you have any other suggestion how to improve huggle's prediction, go ahead and tell us!

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Changes in API action=parse&mobileformat=...
by Max Semenik 09 Jun '14

09 Jun '14

Hi, in response to bug 54607 [1], we've changed the semantics of the mobileformat parameter to action=parse == Summary == Previously, it used to accept strings 'html' or 'wml', later just 'html' and modify the structure of output (see below). This was problematic because you needed to retrieve the HTML from output in different ways, depending on whether mobileformat is specified or not. Now, mobileformat is a boolean parameter, that is if there's a 'mobileformat' parameter in request, it will be treated as "the output should be mobile-friendly", regardless of value. And the output structure will be the same. For compatibility with older callers, mobileformat=(html|wml) will be special-cased to return the older structure at least for 6 month from now. These changes will start being rolled out to the WMF sites starting from tomorrow, Tuesday October 24th and this process will be complete by October 31st. == Examples == === Non-mobile parse === api.php?action=parse&format=xml { "parse": { "title": "...", "text": { "*": "foo" } } } api.php?action=parse&format=json <?xml version="1.0"?> <api> <parse title="..." displaytitle="..."> <text xml:space="preserve">foo</text> </parse> </api> === Parse that outputs mobile HTML, old style === api.php?action=parse&format=json&mobileformat=html { "parse": { "title": "API", "text": "foo" } } api.php?action=parse&format=xml&mobileformat=html <?xml version="1.0"?> <api> <parse title="..." text="foo" displaytitle="..."> </parse> </api> === Parse that outputs mobile HTML, new style === api.php?action=parse&format=...&mobileformat Same as for non-mobile parses. == FAQ == Q: I didn't use mobileformat before, does anything change for me? A: No. Q: I use mobileformat=html, will my bot/tool be broken now? A: No, you will have 6 months to switch to new style. Q: I'm only planning to use mobileformat, what should I do? A: Just use the new style. Q: How did this format discrepancy appear in the first place? A: To err is human. ----- [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54607 -- Best regards, Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])

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MediaWiki 1.19.0beta2
by Sam Reed 09 May '14

09 May '14

I'm happy to announce the availability of the second beta release of the new MediaWiki 1.19 release series. Please try it out and let us know what you think. Don't run it on any wikis that you really care about, unless you are both very brave and very confident in your MediaWiki administration skills. MediaWiki 1.19 is a large release that contains many new features and bug fixes. This is a summary of the major changes of interest to users. You can consult the RELEASE-NOTES-1.19 file for the full list of changes in this version. Five security issues were discovered. It was discovered that the api had a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the block/unblock modules. It was possible for a user account with the block privileges to block or unblock another user without providing a token. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34212 It was discovered that the resource loader can leak certain kinds of private data across domain origin boundaries, by providing the data as an executable JavaScript file. In MediaWiki 1.18 and later, this includes the leaking of CSRF protection tokens. This allows compromise of the wiki's user accounts, say by changing the user's email address and then requesting a password reset. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34907 Jan Schejbal of Hatforce.com discovered a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Special:Upload. Modern browsers (since at least as early as December 2010) are able to post file uploads without user interaction, violating previous security assumptions within MediaWiki. Depending on the wiki's configuration, this vulnerability could lead to further compromise, especially on private wikis where the set of allowed file types is broader than on public wikis. Note that CSRF allows compromise of a wiki from an external website even if the wiki is behind a firewall. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35317 George Argyros and Aggelos Kiayias reported that the method used to generate password reset tokens is not sufficiently secure. Instead we use various more secure random number generators, depending on what is available on the platform. Windows users are strongly advised to install either the openssl extension or the mcrypt extension for PHP so that MediaWiki can take advantage of the cryptographic random number facility provided by Windows. Any extension developers using mt_rand() to generate random numbers in contexts where security is required are encouraged to instead make use of the MWCryptRand class introduced with this release. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35078 A long-standing bug in the wikitext parser (bug 22555) was discovered to have security implications. In the presence of the popular CharInsert extension, it leads to cross-site scripting (XSS). XSS may be possible with other extensions or perhaps even the MediaWiki core alone, although this is not confirmed at this time. A denial-of-service attack (infinite loop) is also possible regardless of configuration. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35315 ********************************************************************* What's new? ********************************************************************* MediaWiki 1.19 brings the usual host of various bugfixes and new features. Comprehensive list of what's new is in the release notes. * Bumped MySQL version requirement to 5.0.2. * Disable the partial HTML and MathML rendering options for Math, and render as PNG by default. * MathML mode was so incomplete most people thought it simply didn't work. * New skins/common/*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css. * The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link. * Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer. * Better timezone recognition in user preferences. * Extensions can now participate in the extraction of titles from URL paths. * The command-line installer supports various RDBMSes better. * The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension). Internationalization - -------------------- * More gender support (for instance in user lists). * Add languages: Canadian English. * Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language. * Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language. * Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18. Release notes - ------------- Full release notes: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/core.git;a=blob_plain;f=RE LEASE-NOTES-1.19;hb=1.19.0beta2 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.19 Co-inciding with these security releases, the MediaWiki source code repository has moved from SVN (at https://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3) to Git (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/gitweb/mediawiki/core.git). So the relevant commits for these releases will not be appearing in our SVN repository. If you use SVN checkouts of MediaWiki for version control, you need to migrate these to Git. If you up are using tarballs, there should be no change in the process for you. Please note that any WMF-deployed extensions have also been migrated to Git also, along with some other non WMF-maintained ones. Please bear with us, some of the Git related links for this release may not work instantly, but should later on. To do a simple Git clone, the command is: git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git More information is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git For more help, please visit the #mediawiki IRC channel on freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki or email The MediaWiki-l mailing list at mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org. ********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz Patch to previous version (1.19.0beta1), without interface text: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz Interface text changes: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc h.gz GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz.si g http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz. sig http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc h.gz.sig Public keys: https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html

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[RFC] Isolate custom jQuery libraries
by Daniel Friesen 04 Apr '14

04 Apr '14

I've been bothered for awhile by the mess we have in resources/jquery/ – 3rd party libraries, custom libraries we have to maintain, and directly MW related code using mediaWiki.* APIs all mixed together in the same directory. So I went and audited the .js we have inside resources/jquery/ and have wrote up an RFC on it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Isolate_custom_jQuery_l… -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]

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Should MediaWiki CSS prefer non-free fonts?
by Brad Jorsch (Anomie) 07 Mar '14

07 Mar '14

I came across Gerrit change 79948[1] today, which makes "VectorBeta" use a pile of non-free fonts (with one free font thrown in at the end as a sop). Is this really the direction we want to go, considering that in many other areas we prefer to use free software whenever we can? Looking around a bit, I see this has been discussed in some "back corners"[2][3] (no offense intended), but not on this list and I don't see any place where free versus non-free was actually discussed rather than being brought up and then seemingly ignored. In case it helps, I did some searching through mediawiki/core and WMF-deployed extensions for font-family directives containing non-free fonts. The results are at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Anomie/font-family (use of non-staff account intentional). [1]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/79948 [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Design/Typography#… [3]: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44394

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ogv.js - JavaScript video decoding proof of concept
by Brion Vibber 06 Mar '14

06 Mar '14

TL;DR SUMMARY: check out this short, silent, black & white video: https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ -- anybody interested in a side project on in-browser audio/video decoding fallback? One of my pet peeves is that we don't have audio/video playback on many systems, including default Windows and Mac desktops and non-Android mobile devices, which don't ship with Theora or WebM video decoding. The technically simplest way to handle this is to transcode videos into H.264 (.mp4 files) which is well supported by the troublesome browsers. Unfortunately there are concerns about the patent licensing, which has held us up from deploying any H.264 output options though all the software is ready to go... While I still hope we'll get that resolved eventually, there is an alternative -- client-side software decoding. We have used the 'Cortado <http://www.theora.org/cortado/>' Java applet to do fallback software decoding in the browser for a few years, but Java applets are aggressively being deprecated on today's web: * no Java applets at all on major mobile browsers * Java usually requires a manual install on desktop * Java applets disabled by default for security on major desktop browsers Luckily, JavaScript engines have gotten *really fast* in the last few years, and performance is getting well in line with what Java applets can do. As an experiment, I've built Xiph's ogg, vorbis, and theora C libraries cross-compiled to JavaScript using emscripten<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten>and written a wrapper that decodes Theora video from an .ogv stream and draws the frames into a <canvas> element: * demo: https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ * code: https://github.com/brion/ogv.js * blog & some details: https://brionv.com/log/2013/10/06/ogv-js-proof-of-concept/ It's just a proof of concept -- the colorspace conversion is incomplete so it's grayscale, there's no audio or proper framerate sync, and it doesn't really stream data properly. But I'm pleased it works so far! (Currently it breaks in IE, but I think I can fix that at least for 10/11, possibly for 9. Probably not for 6/7/8.) Performance on iOS devices isn't great, but is better with lower resolution files :) On desktop it's screaming fast for moderate resolutions, and could probably supplement or replace Cortado with further development. Is anyone interested in helping out or picking up the project to move it towards proper playback? If not, it'll be one of my weekend "fun" projects I occasionally tinker with off the clock. :) -- brion

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Re: [Wikitech-l] [WikimediaMobile] Wikimedia Commons mobile photo uploader app updated on iOS and Android
by rupert THURNER 06 Mar '14

06 Mar '14

On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Yuvi Panda <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hey rupert! > > On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 10:21 PM, rupert THURNER > <rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> hi brion, >> >> thank you so much for that! where is the source code? i tried to >> search for "commons" on https://git.wikimedia.org/. i wanted to look > > Android: https://git.wikimedia.org/summary/apps%2Fandroid%2Fcommons.git > iOS: github.com/wikimedia/Commons-iOS > >> if there is really no account creation at the login screen or it is >> just my phone which does not display one, and which URL the aplication > > Mediawiki doesn't have API support for creating accounts, and hence > the apps don't have create account support yet. created https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53328, maybe you could detail a little bit more how this api should look like? rupert.

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IRC meeting for RFC review
by Tim Starling 05 Feb '14

05 Feb '14

I would like to have an open IRC meeting for RFC review, on Tuesday 24 September at 22:00 UTC (S.F. 3pm). We will work through a few old, neglected RFCs, and maybe consider a few new ones, depending on the interests of those present. The IRC channel will be #mediawiki-rfc. -- Tim Starling

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Welcome to Ken Snider, Wikimedia Operations
by Erik Moeller 28 Jan '14

28 Jan '14

Hello all, I’m delighted to announce that Ken Snider is joining the Wikimedia operations team. He will start as an international contractor working remotely from Toronto, Canada on June 10, and will be visiting SF in the week of June 17. We’re currently in the process of seeking work authorization in the United States in the Director of TechOps position. CT has graciously agreed to support the ops leadership transition full-time through June, and part-time through July. We’ll be starting the handover while Ken is working remotely. A bit more about Ken: Ken was apparently genetically predisposed to become a sysadmin since he joined one of Canada’s first large ISPs, Primus, straight out of school in 1997 and helped build their infrastructure til 2001. He then joined a startup called OpenCOLA in 2001 which was co-founded by Cory Doctorow and developed early P2P precursors to tools like BitTorrent and Steam. It’s best known today for the development of an open source (GPL’d) cola recipe which is still in use (more than 150,000 cans sold if Wikipedia is to be believed). Ken got involved in one of Cory’s pet projects, BoingBoing.net which some of you may have heard of ;-), and has been their sysadmin since 2003. After a stint from 2001-2005 at DataWire, Ken became Director of Tech Ops at Federated Media, a role he held from 2005-2012. Federated Media is an ad network that was founded to support high traffic blogs and sites that want to stay independent of large publishers, with a network that supports more than 1B requests/day. One of the unusual challenges at FM was that the company grew through acquisitions of various blogging and publishing networks. This led to the challenge of integrating very heterogeneous operations and engineering infrastructure, including multiple geographically distributed ops teams and data-center locations. As DTO, Ken led these efforts, such as OS standardization, development of a unified deployment infrastructure, etc. Ken also ensured that the operations group partnered effectively with the various engineering teams developing site features and enhancements. I want to again take this opportunity to thank CT Woo for his tireless operations leadership since December 2010. I’d also like to thank everyone who’s participated in the Director of TechOps search process. Please join me in welcoming Ken to the Wikimedia Foundation and the community. :-) All best, Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikitech-l October 2013