Dear all,

I am happy to announce the availability of the first stable release of the new MediaWiki 1.22 release series.

MediaWiki 1.22 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-1.22 file for the full list of changes in this version.

Our thanks to everyone who helped to improve MediaWiki by testing the release candidates and submitting bug reports.

== What's new? == MediaWiki 1.22 includes all changes released in the smaller 1.22wmfX software deployments to Wikimedia sites.

=== Anti-spam and countervandalism improvements === We're improving countervandalism and anti-spam features: * The patrolling system has been improved to make the "mark as patrolled" link available on any patrollable page or revision, without having to go to Special:RecentChanges or Special:NewPages. It is no longer necessary to look up the "rcid" URI parameter from these special pages. (Bug 15936) * Extension:SimpleAntiSpam, a small but harmless shield against the simplest forms of spambots, has been merged into core.

===Editing improvements=== * When comparing revisions in the history or when previewing changes while editing, "(No difference)" is now shown in place of a diff when the revisions are identical. (Bug 14431) * After a successful edit, the confirmation message "Your edit was saved." is now shown. Formerly a separate extension (Extension:PostEdit), this feature is now part of the core software. (Bug 48276)

===Upgrades to Vector and other skins=== The old Vector extension has been merged into core, and the extension has been discontinued. The new version includes several improvements to both the Vector skin and cross-skin features. (Bug 45051) If you were previously using the Vector extension, you must uninstall it (the extension, not the skin) before upgrading to 1.22.

All skins: * Section edit links are now displayed next to their respective headings rather than along the opposite side of the page. (Bug 41729) * Lists of templates and categories used on the page, displayed below the edit form, are now collapsible. The area with license information, edit summary, and related functionality below the edit field has received a minor graphical lift. (Bug 43689) * An "edit warning" is now displayed when the user attempts to leave the edit page with unsaved changes, on browsers supporting dialogs. * Vector skin only: ** Navigation menu subsections are now collapsible. ** Page tabs can now dynamically fold into a dropdown menu when the browser window isn't wide enough to fit them.

===Support for Composer=== The Composer PHP dependency manager can now be used to install some extensions. It solves many common problems, including finding where to download an extension, resolving all of its dependencies and libraries, and selecting the right versions. Most MediaWiki extensions do not currently support Composer, but this is expected to change.

==Upgrade notices for MediaWiki administrators== As with every release, there are some routine maintenance and upgrade tasks that go beyond the primary installation process.

===PHP JSON extension now required=== Though the minimum PHP version is still 5.3.2, MediaWiki now requires either the native JSON extension or the pecl-json-c fork. Most servers already have this PHP extension installed and enabled. However, if you administer your own server, and the MediaWiki installer says you don't have this extension: * If you compiled PHP yourself with the --disable-all configure option, you may have to recompile with --enable-json. * On Red Hat or CentOS, check for the line extension=json.so in /etc/php.ini or /etc/php.d/json.ini. * Ubuntu 13.10, Fedora 19, and other recent Linux distributions package pecl-json-c separately, under names such as php5-json (Ubuntu universe) and php-pecl-jsonc (Fedora). They no longer include the original JSON extension because of licensing concerns.

=== Several ancient skins removed === On April 1, 2013, several ancient skins were removed from core (not an April Fools' joke): Chick, Classic, MySkin, Nostalgia and Simple.

Nostalgia was the phase I/UseModWiki-like skin, and Classic was the main skin before the introduction of the default MonoBook in MediaWiki 1.3 on May 22, 2004. Dating back to February 2002 both skins existed over a year before MediaWiki got its name.

=== Blank system messages must be deleted === Blanking a system message (editing it on wiki to remove all content) will no longer restore the default value for the message, but instead make it show as an empty string in the interface (fixing Bug 14176, "Add ability to disable MediaWiki messages"). If you have blank messages on your wiki (check Special:AllMessages), you must delete them unless you want them to display as empty.

===Protection rights usage has changed=== A new setting ($wgCascadingRestrictionLevels) was added for enabling cascading protection for protection levels other than "Allow only administrators" (Bug 47617). Shortly afterward, the way the "editprotected" and "autoconfirmed" rights work was changed. In particular, the "autoconfirmed" right is now only used for rate limiting, not page protection. If your wiki has custom user groups with the "autoconfirmed" right, you may need to grant those groups the new "editsemiprotected" right when you upgrade.

===Special:Disambiguations has been removed=== Special:Disambiguations, a page that listed "Pages linking to disambiguation pages", has been removed (Bug 35981). If your wiki used this feature, consider using Extension:Disambiguator. Switching to the new extension is easy and generally only requires a small change to a single template.

=== Bundled extensions === Newly bundled for 1.22: * SimpleAntiSpam

Full release notes: https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/1.22.0/RELEASE-NOTES-1.2... https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.22

********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.22/mediawiki-1.22.0.tar.gz

GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.22/mediawiki-1.22.0.tar.gz.sig

Public keys: https://www.mediawiki.org/keys/keys.html

---- Markus (mglaser)