Last modified: 2010-05-15 14:36:07 UTC
However, it continues to process such an update, changing the namespace number to 0 or 255, possibly destroying or duplicating content, or making pages inaccessible. Do the Special: or Media: namespaces work at all? As far as I can tell, the former is quietly redirected to MediaWiki:, and the latter to Image:. Using an unsigned eight-bit value for namespace numbers is a terrible limitation (it isn't even documented anywhere). In places, the code currently assumes negative values are legal (e.g., NS_MEDIA = -2 and NS_SPECIAL = -1). Such a small range will inevitably lead to namespace conflicts. Why was cur_namespace chosen to be a tinyint?
Special and media are, well, special namespaces: no pages are stored with them.
And presumably the reason for only allowing such a small range is that it was never anticipated that anyone would want more seperate namespaces than that: the original version had, what, about half a dozen? I honestly can't think why anyone *would* want >256 different namespaces (or perhaps think of that as 128 + an associated _talk for each one, but even then); unless they were trying to create a "FractalWiki"-type system, where different namespaces were treated as though they were their own wiki, in which case I think a limit on the number of namespaces would be the least of their problems.
(In reply to comment #2) > And presumably the reason for only allowing such a small range is that it was > never anticipated that anyone would want more seperate namespaces than that: the > original version had, what, about half a dozen? I honestly can't think why > anyone *would* want >256 different namespaces (or perhaps think of that as 128 + > an associated _talk for each one, but even then); unless they were trying to > create a "FractalWiki"-type system, where different namespaces were treated as > though they were their own wiki, in which case I think a limit on the number of > namespaces would be the least of their problems. Yes, probably. The limit is fairly simple to adjust, even after the wiki has been created, but it's aggravating. It still ought to handle values outside the set range in a way that doesn't require repairing the database by hand. It's really easy to encounter the limit if one isn't aware of it; the code suggests that numbers down to -15 should be valid, and most people don't think of 256 as a nice round number. I almost started adding custom namespaces at 1000 (thinking I'd seen that done somewhere else). Padding namespaces to avoid collisions later gives maybe 20-40 names until the limit, starting from 100. FractalWiki sounds fun. Are there wikis which support nested namespaces?
So, what is the bug here? What do you mean by "Set namespace less than 0"? How do you set it, SQL?
Custom namespaces are defined using the $wgExtraNamespaces array. DefaultSettings.php provides an illustration: # $wgExtraNamespaces = # array(100 => "Hilfe", # 101 => "Hilfe_Diskussion", # 102 => "Aide", # 103 => "Discussion_Aide");
I added a comment in defaultsettings (HEAD): # Custom namespaces should start at 100 and stop at 255 (hard limit set by database)
Marking this as FIXED.
I have no idea why this was marked fixed, as it's not.
Bumping namespace fields from tinyint to int in 1.5. Checked into CVS HEAD.
