State of 3.8, and thoughts on the next week

tl; dr: Still on track for release next Thursday. We’re extending the window for code changes by 3 days, through the 8th. RC2 package on the 9th will be what ships on the 12th.

December 5th, our targeted but controversial freeze date, is drawing to a close. First the bad news: there are two blockers and we could not ship the package we have tonight, despite a lot of great effort. The good news is we are close, there are good priorities on the remaining issues, the new features appear resilient and are live on WP.com which has generated a ton of testing, and we’re far enough out from our target (the 12th) that I’m confident we can ship that morning and still have had a 4-day freeze.

As a side-effect of the longer freeze and predictable date, I also think the best WP hosts will push it to their customers same-day and we’ll continue or improve our record of having localized versions ready to go.

What could break it? If an unknown unknown blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. pops up on Tuesday or Wednesday, we’re going to have to delay the release until the following week. Discovering that issue sooner, so it wouldn’t cause a delay, is a function of testing — the more we can test and cover now the better. We want to shake out big issues now, not next week. The more people that can run the RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). or trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. at this point, the healthier the release will be.

What’s open right now? Our most substantial blocker, no-JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. fallback for THX #25964, was raised a few weeks ago and we could have flagged its priority and developed a solution then, rather than the flurry of activity its had over the last two days. Our other blocker, the about.php page, is similar: I should have kicked off that page (#26387) when we nailed down exactly what headline features would be in the release, which was much earlier. Often user-focused non-code deliverables wind up as the last thing we do, but they’re so visible they deserve time to bake just like a complex backend change would. Of the the other 15-ish open issues there is nothing intractable, but there’s also nothing trivial, and for some issues we need to make a non-obvious decision to move it forward. We made the decision to puntpunt Contributors sometimes use the verb "punt" when talking about a ticket. This means it is being pushed out to a future release. This typically occurs for lower priority tickets near the end of the release cycle that don't "make the cut." In this is colloquial usage of the word, it means to delay or equivocate. (It also describes a play in American football where a team essentially passes up on an opportunity, hoping to put themselves in a better position later to try again.) or revert a number of things that weren’t fully ready yet, like the new author widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. and RSSJS.

The things we missed are not a matter of having enough time, they’re a matter of priority. I think properly triaging issues as soon as they come in and being disciplined about working from highest to lowest will allow future release to avoid these problems. Even though that’s not hard to understand intellectually, sometimes you have to make the mistake to really grok it. I’m extremely proud of everyone who has been involved so far and in the amount of learning and growth I’ve observed even in our accelerated cycle.

#3-8