Semantic MediaWiki 5 Released

Highlights

Version 5 brings support for MediaWiki 1.43, the latest LTS release. It also brings support for the latest versions of PHP, up to version 8.4. The minimum required versions have been raised to MediaWiki 1.39 and PHP 8.1. For more detailed information, see the compatibility matrix.

Various of the SMW user interfaces have been refreshed. They are now more consistent, look better on mobile devices, and integrate better with MediaWiki's new Codex system. A good example is the overhauled DataTables format, depicted below.

Various front-end performance improvements have been made, improving page load speed.

You can find the full list of changes in the SMW 5 release notes and the Semantic Result Formats 5 release notes.

Credits

Over 15 people contributed to this release. We would like to thank all contributors.

Upgrading

Semantic MediaWiki 5.0 is a major release, so it contains breaking changes. The main breaking change is the raised minimum MediaWiki and PHP version. The remaining breaking changes are unlikely to affect most users.

There is no need to run the "update.php" maintenance script or any of the rebuild data scripts.

We recommend that everyone running older versions of SMW upgrades. Especially if you are running SMW 4.0.1 or older, as these versions contain a known security vulnerability. SMW 4.x is no longer supported.

Get the new version via Composer:

• Step 1: Ensure the SMW version in composer.local.json is ^5.0.0
• Step 2: Run composer in your MediaWiki directory: composer update --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Get the new version via Git:

This is only for those that have installed SMW via Git.

• Step 1: do a git pull in the SemanticMediaWiki directory
• Step 2: run composer update --no-dev --optimize-autoloader in the MediaWiki directory

Professional Semantic MediaWiki Services

At Professional Wiki, we provide Semantic MediaWiki services, including SMW hosting, SMW software development, SMW consulting, and various MediaWiki services.

You can try out Semantic MediaWiki via the free trial on ProWiki.