This is a notice that on Tuesday, September 3rd between 20:00-21:00 UTC
(1-2pm PDT) Wikimedia Foundation will release security updates for current
and supported branches of the MediaWiki software, as well as several
extensions. Downloads and patches will be available at that time, with the
git repositories updated later that afternoon.
When we began creating cross-browser regression tests using Selenium, we
kept them all in a repository named '/qa/browsertests'. We created
regression tests for features across all WMF development teams and Platform
functions, from the appearance of Preferences to navigating UploadWizard to
ArticleFeedback and PageTriage to MobileFrontend to
UniversalLanguageSelector etc. etc. etc. We run these tests against some
combinations of environments in beta labs cluster, test2wiki, and
production.
There will probably always be a need for a grab-bag repo of general
cross-browser regression tests, but managing tests in this way has some
drawbacks:
* builds run for all features at the same time, regardless of the
development process for each feature
* failed builds can be caused by any feature, and it takes some effort to
find the source of any failed build
We have taken some steps recently to improve how we manage and run these
tests. In particular, we have begun moving certain browser tests out of
the /qa/browsertests repo and into the repos of the particular extensions
or features being tested. From there, we are running individual builds for
those features in the appropriate test environments.
Our first model for doing this was MobileFrontend. The browser tests for
MobileFrontend have resided in /MobileFrontend/tests/acceptance for some
time now, and building from that repo has proven quite effective.
Not long ago Nik Everett created an extensive set of browser tests for
CirrusSearch and very quickly put them under /CirrusSearch/tests/browser.
Work on CirrusSearch is proceeding quickly and these tests fail often for
now, so it is nice to have them in a repo where they can be examined
outside of the main /qa/browsertest builds.
Back in May of this year we created a number of browser tests for the
UniversalLanguageSelector with help from Runa Bhattacharjee and Niklas
Laxström, and Amir Aharoni has been doing work on those in the time since.
Recently at the request of the Language team we moved the ULS browser
tests to the repo at UniversalLanguageSelector/tests/browser, and we're
running those in their own build as well.
Finally, we have been creating some browser tests for VisualEditor that
will be particularly useful for cross-browser acceptance testing and
regression testing. Of course the tests are valuable right now as well,
they help us identify important issues like
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53360. These tests today
reside under VisualEditor/modules/ve-mw/test/browser. Rachel Thomas, our
intern with the Outreach Program for Women has contributed a number of
VisualEditor browser tests.
Hello,
I would like to announce the release of MediaWiki language extension
bundle 2013.08
* https://translatewiki.net/mleb/MediaWikiLanguageExtensionBundle-2013.08.tar…
* sha256sum: 21b3abf3a8e19d0c746d41d246e4bc8883d0f5e179d894e1720500031c621f2c
Quick links:
* Installation instructions are at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB
* Announcements of new releases will be posted to a mailing list:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n
* Report bugs to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org
* Talk with us at #mediawiki-i18n @ freenode
Release notes for each extension are below.
Kartik Mistry
== Babel, CLDR and LocalisationUpdate ==
* Only localisation updates.
== Translate ==
=== Noteworthy changes ===
* Initial translation area height is increased. With a higher
translation area it provides more space for suggestions.
* Bug 47861: Allow text selection in page mode of Special:Translate so
that parts of original message can be copied and pasted.
* Bug 46875: The tooltip highlighting the proofread action now appears
less often in incorrect places.
* Bug 36692: On language stats and message group stats, rows can no
longer get stuck in highlighted state.
* On translation pages, a "Translate" tab is shown instead of "Edit"
tab to improve usability and discoverability of the translation
functionality.
* Bug 49850: The page mode of Special:Translate parsed incorrectly
some square brackets as external links. Now it checks for supported
protocol before turning it into a link.
* Bug 52623: Discard changes button now works as expected in Google Chrome.
* Map 'be-tarask' language to 'be' language in Yandex machine
translation suggestion.
* Bug 52272: Assistant languages suggestions ('In other languages')
are no longer stripped of newlines.
* A step forwards for arbitrary source language for translatable pages
was taken. Translate now extension now respects the page soure
language returned by MediaWiki. There is still no user interface to
set the page source language.
* Bug 49326: Add "notify translators" link after marking page for
translation when TranslationNotifications is installed.
* Loading of message content now works correctly. It was broken with
namespaces which did not force capitalization of the first letter.
* Bug 52216: Special:AggregateGroups has now better group selector
which supports search.
=== Changes relevant to API users and developers ===
* Check for and disallow dynamic groups in ApiQueryMessageGroupStats.
* Reimplement beforeSubmit, afterSubmit and afterRegisterFeatures
hooks to support them in the new TUX editor.
== UniversalLanguageSelector ==
=== Noteworthy changes ===
* Added support for event logging. To use it you need to install the
EventLogging extension. The support is considered to be experimental.
To enable event logging, add following lines to your LocalSettings.php:
require_once "$IP/extensions/EventLogging/EventLogging.php";
$wgMainCacheType = CACHE_MEMCACHED;
$wgMemCachedServers = array( '127.0.0.1:11211' );
$wgEventLoggingBaseUri = 'http://localhost:8080/event.gif';
$wgEventLoggingFile = '/var/log/mediawiki/events.log';
To learn more about setting up EventLogging extention, see:
[1] https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-EventLogging/blob/master/…
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EventLogging
* The libraries are loaded on demand, when they are actually used for
reducing traffic.
* Language settings are closed when clicked outside ULS langauge
selection window.
* Bug 50564: When the user makes changes in multiple modules and
clicks the Cancel button or closes the language settings after that,
cancel the changes in all the modules.
* Bug 50562: Canceling font change doesn't work for system font.
* Internal code changes to improve performance and make loading faster.
* Top position the ULS for IME menu with reference to the input field
instead of ... menu item to fix weird positioning at some places.
* Bug 51923: Use no-repeat follow url for background images to remove
possible duplicate images
* Fix wrong language comparison in webfonts so that expliticit
fontfamily style are not added to child elements.
* Use events instead of callbacks for success or no results in the ULS
search box. This allows extension users to bind for this event and
reduces callbacks.
* Use mw.hook for notifying cancel of settings window to modules.
* Documentation fixes.
=== Browser Blacklisting ===
* Currently, Internet Explorer < 7 is blacklisted for MediaWiki
version 1.22 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are explicitly blacklisted
for MediaWiki before version 1.22
=== Fonts ===
* Added Gentium font for Latin languages rich with diacritics like
IPA, Vietnamese and Polytonic Greek.
* Added Junicode font for Old English.
* Added Phetsarath font for Lao.
* Added lklug font for Sinhala.
* Added the Nuosu SIL font for the Yi language.
* Added Xerxes for for Old Persian.
* Added Shapour font for Pahlavi script.
* Added Nazli as a serif font for Persian script.
=== Input methods ===
* Bug fixes in Gujarati Phonetic, Gujarati Inscript 2, Punjabi
Phonetic and Oriya keyboards that didn't allow typing some characters.
* Added Kyrgyz Cyrillic keyboard.
* Added IPA X-SAMPA layout.
* Fixed the IPA-SIL layout: use the "modifier letter apostrophe" for
ejective consonants.
* Fixes ZWNJ character issues for Hindi and Marathi input methods.
* Updated Javanese keyboard.
* Removed outdated Myanmar keyboard.
--
Kartik Mistry | IRC: kart_
{0x1f1f, kartikm}.wordpress.com
Today we threw the big lever and turned on our new search backend at
mediawiki.org. It isn't the default yet but it is just about ready for you
to try. Here is what is we think we've improved:
1. Templates are now expanded during search so:
1a. You can search for text included in templates
1b. You can search for categories included in templates
2. The search engine is updated very quickly after articles change.
3. A few funky things around intitle and incategory:
3a. You can combine them with a regular query (incategory:kings peaceful)
3b. You can use prefix searches with them (incategory:norma*)
3c. You can use them everywhere in the query (roger incategory:normans)
What we think we've made worse and we're working on fixing:
1. Because we're expanding templates some things that probably shouldn't
be searched are being searched. We've fixed a few of these issues but I
wouldn't be surprised if more come up. We opened Bug 53426 regarding audio
tags.
2. The relative weighting of matches is going to be different. We're
still fine tuning this and we'd appreciate any anecdotes describing search
results that seem out of order.
3. We don't currently index headings beyond the article title in any
special way. We'll be fixing that soon. (Bug 53481)
4. Searching for file names or clusters of punctuation characters doesn't
work as well as it used to. It still works reasonably well if you surround
your query in quotes but it isn't as good as it was. (Bugs 53013 and 52948)
5. "Did you mean" suggestions currently aren't highlighted at all and
sometimes we'll suggest things that aren't actually better. (Bugs 52286 and
52860)
6. incategory:"category with spaces" isn't working. (Bug 53415)
What we've changed that you probably don't care about:
1. Updating search in bulk is much more slow then before. This is the
cost of expanding templates.
2. Search is now backed by a horizontally scalable search backend that is
being actively developed (Elasticsearch) so we're in a much better place to
expand on the new solution as time goes on.
Neat stuff if you run your own MediaWiki:
CirrusSearch is much easier to install than our current search
infrastructure.
So what will you notice? Nothing! That is because while the new search
backend (CirrusSearch) is indexing we've left the current search
infrastructure as the default while we work on our list of bugs. You can
see the results from CirrusSearch by performing your search as normal and
adding "&srbackend=CirrusSearch" to the url parameters.
If you notice any problems with CirrusSearch please file bugs directly for
it:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
Nik Everett
== HTTPS enabled by default for logged-in users on Wikimedia sites ==
Today, August 28, the Wikimedia Foundation is making a change to the
software that powers the Wikimedia projects: By default, all logged-in
users will now be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. What this does
is encrypt the connection between the Wikimedia servers and the user's
browser so that the information sent between the two is not readable by
anyone else. This is in response to the recent concerns over the privacy
and security of our user community, and we explained the rationale for
this change in our post about the future of HTTPS at Wikimedia[0].
===What this means for you ===
How this works is simple: If a user wants to log in, they will be
redirected to use HTTPS for the login, thus keeping their username and
password secure. After they are logged in, they stay on the HTTPS
version of the Wikimedia site they are using.
=== Excluded Countries ===
Some users live in areas where HTTPS is not an easy option, most times
because of explicit blocking by a government. At the request of these
communities, we have made an explicit exclusion for users from those
affected countries. Simply put, users from China and Iran will not be
required to use HTTPS for logging in, nor for viewing any Wikimedia
project site
===Disabling===
Are you having a slow or unreliable experience while browsing Wikimedia
sites over HTTPS? Then you can turn HTTPS off in your user preferences,
under the "User profile" tab: Uncheck "Always use a secure connection
when logged in". You will need to log out and log in again for the
preference to take effect. But remember, you will still need to log in
using the secure HTTPS process.
===HELP!===
For further details, please see the HTTPS[1] page on Meta-Wiki, which is
available in several languages.
Are you unable to log in and edit a Wikimedia wiki after this change?
Please contact the Wikimedia Foundation Operations team via any means
you find comfortable, including this blog post's comments section, on
IRC in the #wikimedia-operations channel, or via the https(a)wikimedia.org
email address.
Greg Grossmeier
[0]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/01/future-https-wikimedia-projects/
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/HTTPS
--
| Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E |
| identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |
Hey,
I'm curious what the stance of WMF is on BSD, MIT and MPL licensed code. In
particular, could such code be deployed on WMF servers?
Cheers
--
Jeroen De Dauw
http://www.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil. ~=[,,_,,]:3
--
Hey,
Two days ago I created a tag for Diff [0]. While I'm writing this mail, the
tag has yet to appear on the GitHub mirror [1]. I made a commit after I
first noticed the tag did not appear to see if replicating that would also
sync the tags, which turned out not to be the case, as the commit made it
onto GitHub, while the tag did not show up.
We do not appear to have an appropriate component on bugzilla for this
piece of our infrastructure, so reporting the issue here.
[0] tag "0.8"
https://git.wikimedia.org/tags/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FDiff.git
[1] https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-Diff/releases
Cheers
--
Jeroen De Dauw
http://www.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil. ~=[,,_,,]:3
--
