-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Daniel Cannon wrote:
Noticed that a scap was recently done on Wikimedia and so went to try out Special:Blockip to find that the "Prevent user from sending e-mail" message (MediaWiki:Ipblockemail) displayed as <ipblockemail> (or whatever screwiness it is when there is no such message), although the message had been defined in MessagesEn.php. When I went to the system message, it displayed the correct default message but did not take effect until I saved the message (creating it with its default value). This problem does not seem to exist on testwiki, and it never did on my local wiki or my public testwiki. Any idea what's going on?
This is an artifact of the caching system we use for message files. You should be able to reproduce it via something like this:
1) Go into $IP/serialized
2) Run "make" to build serialized cache files of all the message arrays
3) Add a new message to the message files and make the software use it
Assuming I'm not off my rocker, this'll show the behavior you describe. ;)
When making updates, you have to update the serialized files by running "make" in there again; then the message will show up.
Now, the serialization update is a part of the scap process, so you _shouldn't_ actually see this problem on the live site unless you're playing on test.wikipedia.org between a "svn up" and a scap. There might be race conditions though if it's not copying the serialized files before the code, or other such intermittent boondoggles.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)