Jeffrey Paul 2:49 am on July 20, 2017
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Dev Chat Summary: July 19th (4.8.1 week 5)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from July 19th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.8.1 schedule

  • Access to Mission Control was lacking and delayed 4.8.1 beta release
  • Working to commit #40974, #38964, #40794 for 4.8.1 beta
  • Final planned bug scrub is Thursday, July 20th 16:00 UTC / Thursday, July 20th 16:00 UTC
  • Bug scrub will be focused on punting anything not headed towards a commit by Friday
  • If tickets in milestone drops to zero, we will continue with the planned 4.8.1 schedule:
    • RC – Monday, July 24th (hard string freeze)
    • Launch – Tuesday, August 1st

General announcements

#4-8, #4-8-1, #dev-chat, #summary

Felix Arntz 4:56 pm on July 19, 2017
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PHP Meeting Recap – July 17th

This recap is a summary of the second weekly PHP meeting. It highlights the ideas and decisions which came up during that meeting, both as a means of documenting and to provide a quick overview for those who were unable to attend.

The meeting’s chat log.

Attendees: @drewapicture @flixos90 @jdgrimes @joyously @mte90 @psykro @ptasker @schlessera @screamingdev @sergey @sobak @varjik

Chat Summary

In the beginning of the meeting, the discussion from last week about investigating ways to increase the amount of sites on a supported PHP version was continued.

  • It was highlighted that a possible notice displayed to admins of sites on old PHP versions should have pluggable parts that would allow hosts to serve upgrade instructions specific to their platform. The minimum required there would be a host-specific link to a page with detailed instructions, which could for example be set through environment variables. This should be possible independently from core so that further integrations or changes would not require a new core release.
  • There should also be a general “Browse Happy”-type information page on wordpress.org, that the notice could link to either as a fallback or in addition to the host-specific URL. Such a page should explain what PHP is and why it matters that a supported version should be used. It should be an easy-to-understand and precise document that could also be shared in other instances. A GitHub repository could be set up to start work and beforehand gather similar sites that have already been created by third parties.
  • While we have mentioned before that plugins should be able to define their minimum required PHP version (see #40934), it should also be possible to define the PHP version the plugin has been tested up to. Otherwise we could only prevent installs of newer plugins, but outdated ones could still break on a new PHP version without any further notice.
  • In regard to that, while it may be impossible to do that, it would be great if WordPress had the possibility to automatically scan installed plugins and show a message to the admin that, for example all their plugins work correctly with PHP 7 or that some specific plugins might cause trouble on PHP 7. While the recommendation is to upgrade to PHP 7, there are several plugins that are not yet compatible, and a user should not learn that the hard way.

Later in the meeting @drewapicture emphasized that we had so far skipped a significant part: While everyone that was part of a discussion had apparently been convinced that WordPress should push for a more modern PHP version, we had never framed the actual problem (or problems) that this is currently causing. Therefore it was decided to take a step back and think about what those are. Even if WordPress is not going to raise the minimum requirement, the task is to specify why it is worth pushing hosts and users to a newer version. A good idea to approach this is to phrase problems like “WordPress supporting legacy PHP is…”. Here are some of the initial takes that came up:

  • WordPress supporting legacy PHP is making the developers spend more time chasing obscure bugs and less time building new features.
  • WordPress supporting legacy PHP means it will at some point completely lose connection to current PHP.
  • WordPress supporting legacy PHP has become more of a liability than a feature for its users.
  • WordPress supporting legacy PHP means other platforms will outpace WordPress soon.
  • WordPress supporting legacy PHP causes most development to just evaporate as compatibility friction.

These were just a few first thoughts that came up, and it’s important to spend more time on clearly defining the problem before proceeding, and especially consider how this causes a global problem for WordPress aside from specific groups like administrators, hosts or developers.

We need solid arguments to get backers, and we’d also need to figure out who the decision-makers are, get them involved and their buy-in. If you are reading this and you are a lead developer, long-time core developer or another kind of stakeholder in the project, we would be happy to have you onboard, or at least join the meeting for next week to help us frame the problem of WordPress supporting unsupported PHP versions.

In the aftermath of the meeting, there have since been several good thoughts and discussions happening in the channel which should also be considered in next week’s meeting. If you’re interested, please take some time to browse through the recent chats in the channel.

Next week’s meeting

The next meeting will take place on Monday 18:00 UTC, as always in #core-php, and we will take this meeting to bring forward and discuss the problems that supporting an outdated PHP version in WordPress results in. If you have ideas but cannot make the meeting, please leave a comment on this post so that we can take them into account. See you next week!

#core-php, #php, #summary

Jeffrey Paul 2:33 pm on July 19, 2017
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Dev Chat Agenda for July 19th (4.8.1 week 5)

This is the agenda for the weekly dev meeting on July 19, 2017 at 20:00 UTC / July 19, 2017 at 20:00 UTC:

  • 4.8.1 timing
  • 4.8.1 Beta help needed (support with Mission Control)
  • General announcements

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, please leave a comment below. See you there!

#4-8, #4-8-1, #agenda, #dev-chat

William Earnhardt 1:06 am on July 19, 2017
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Multisite Recap for the week of July 17th

Office Hours Recap

The agenda for this office hours meeting was to review the current state of the multisite roadmap and plan out how to complete it for publishing as an official document on the make blog.

The meeting’s chat log

Attendees: @desrosj, @earnjam, @feshin, @flixos90, @jeremyfelt, @jmdodd, @johnbillion, @maximeculea, @spacedmonkey, @stephdau, @stevenkword

Chat Summary:

  • @jeremyfelt shared a link to the draft roadmap document for review.
    • @desrosj suggested using the Taxonomy roadmap posts an example
    • We agreed that the roadmap should be broken up into specific sections for REST API, Internal APIs, and Implementation, with each of those sections having their own users, sites, and networks areas.
    • We will also need a section of the document dedicated to “bootstrap” or file organization and load order. See #40647, #40948, #29684, #40646
  • The first priority should be the REST and Internal APIs. Once those are in better shape, they can be used to make improvements to the multisite UX/UI and we can focus on the different network admin screens that need attention.
  • Because networks are managed in widely varying ways, the primary goal of multisite should be to provide standardized data structures and low-level database APIs to support a range of network and multi-network implementations through plugins and custom code. The roadmap should reflect this philosophy.
  • We will need to discuss the “global” state (data spanning multiple networks) and make decisions on what should be implemented there. Right now users are the only global data, but even things like number of users are stored per-network and not globally.
  • Before getting too detailed on the actual roadmap document, we will spend the next few office hours meetings discussing specific items that will go into and affect the direction of the roadmap, including network meta, global state, and some Internal API decisions (See #40180 and #40228)

The next office hours will take place on Tuesday 16:00 UTC. An agenda for it will be posted in advance.

Ticket Scrub Recap

The agenda for this ticket scrub was to continue going through the list of multisite-related good-first-bug tickets for new contributors, review their status, and adjust keywords as necessary.

The meeting’s chat log

Attendees: @earnjam, @euthelup, @flixos90, @greatislander, @maximeculea

Chat Summary:

  • #40363: Remove current_blog_ cache invalidation from clean_blog_cache()
    • Waiting for feedback from @jjj and @jeremyfelt over possible backward compatibility concerns with removing these
  • #41163: Display active theme name on Sites screen
    • This could make use of a wp_blogmeta table if it gets implemented, but in current form would require switch_to_blog() calls for each row in the list table.
    • Related to #40268
    • good-first-bug keyword removed since it will require further discussion across multiple tickets.
  • #41168: Identify the active theme when editing a site’s themes
    • Discussion revolved around disabling ability to disable the active theme to protect users from not being able to switch back after changing the theme.
    • Because of a possible inconsistency with network-enabled themes and a common paradigm of deprecating old themes by disabling them, the agreed upon suggestion was to only apply a label for the active theme and not change the enable/disable functionality.
  • #41166: .htaccess config should not be shown on network setup screen when Nginx is in use
    • Existing patch is in good shape, but needs minor update to use $is_nginx global
    • Suggested updates to the codex for subdirectory/subdomain configuration
  • #41169: Inaccurate descriptive text when adding a new site
    • Slight verbiage change to patch suggested.
    • Patch has since been committed and ticket closed.

The next ticket scrub will take place on Monday 17:00 UTC. An agenda for it will be posted in advance.

If you were unable to attend one of these meetings but have feedback, please share your thoughts in the comments on this post. In case there’s a need for further discussion we will ensure to make time for it in one of next week’s chats. See you next week!

#4-9, #multisite, #networks-sites, #summary

Ryan Welcher 8:07 pm on July 18, 2017
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New Contributors Meeting Recap – July 12

This week’s New Contributors Meeting was held on Wed July 12th at 19:00. Once again, there were lots of great questions asked in the #core channel. Read the full chat archive here.

Discussion Highlights:

Tickets Discussed:

  • #40921 – Inconsistent Handling of mp4 by Audio Widget
  • #40138 – Bundled themes: the tag cloud widget should output a list
  • #22669 – iPad: Can’t Scroll Plugins Modal
  • #41168 – Identify the active theme when editing a site’s themes

The next meeting will take place in the #core slack channel on Wed, July 19th at 19:00. Please feel free to drop in with any questions or tickets you’d like to discuss!

Thanks to everyone that attended and please feel free to leave a comment below or reach out to any of the moderators with questions.

Moderators: @flixos90, @welcher, @stevenkword, @desrosj

#new-contributors, #summaries

Felix Arntz 1:30 pm on July 17, 2017
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Multisite Agenda for the week of July 17th

Office Hours Agenda

This is the agenda for the weekly office hours meeting on Tuesday 16:00 UTC in #core-multisite.

  • Review the current state of the multisite roadmap and discuss the next steps to get it ready as an official document that we can publish on the make blog.
  • We especially need to define the scope of the roadmap. This includes looking at which work areas of multisite belong into it. For these areas we will need to either have the major decisions already made or plan respective meetings to come to a conclusion.

Ticket Scrub Agenda

This is the agenda for the weekly ticket scrub meeting on Monday 17:00 UTC in #core-multisite.

Please join the chat if you’re interested in one of the topics. In case you cannot make the respective meeting, we will be working on publishing a recap post afterwards. If you have some thoughts beforehand or would like something related to be part of the agenda, feel free to share your ideas in the comments for this post. See you in the chat!

#4-9, #agenda, #multisite, #networks-sites

Steven Word 8:26 am on July 17, 2017
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Multisite Recap for the week of July 10th

Office Hours Recap

The agenda for this office hours meeting included a discussion around the introducing a wp_blogmeta table and related *_site_meta() functions to store arbitrary data for sites, particularly as a means to extend the future sites REST API endpoint. See #37923 for the respective ticket.

The meeting’s chat log

Attendees: @dac @earnjam @flixos90 @jeremyfelt @jjj @maximeculea @spacedmonkey @stephdau @stevenkword

Chat Summary:

  • There is a feature plugin available for installing site meta (the database table is called blogmeta for legacy reasons).
  • A consensus was reached for proposing a new blogmeta table which will be beneficial but not required for the planned REST API sites endpoint.
  • Priority for the 4.9 release will be the introduction of this new table with focus on adding a related meta_query to wp_site_query deferred to a subsequent release. See #40229.

The next office hours will take place on Tuesday 16:00 UTC. An agenda for it will be posted in advance.

Ticket Scrub Recap

The agenda for this ticket scrub was to go through the multisite good-first-bug tickets. We worked off of this report with the aim of general gardening, adjusting keywords as necessary and removing good-first-bug keywords for tickets that are overly complex or have been open and without activity for an extended period of time.

The meeting’s chat log

Attendees: @danhgilmore @earnjam @flixos90 @pcarvalho @pmbaldha @stevenkword

Chat Summary:

  • #20537: Don’t spawn cron requests for suspended blogs.
    • We successfully applied the latest patch and provided a request for user testing.
  • #37799: Add progress indicator to “Upgrade Network” page
    • We successfully applied the latest patch and provided UI feedback.
  • #39213: Audit the network pages notices.
    • We successfully applied the latest patch and provided a request for user testing.
  • #39419: Explicitly globalize global variables in ms-settings.php
    • We successfully applied the latest patch and provided a request for documentation.
  • #41167: Remove help text duplication on Site editing screens in network admin
    • We successfully applied the latest patch and provided a request for a refreshed patch that resolved warnings from trailing CRs.

The next ticket scrub will take place on Monday 17:00 UTC. An agenda for it will be posted in advance.

If you were unable to attend one of these meetings but have feedback, please share your thoughts in the comments on this post. In case there’s a need for further discussion we will ensure to make time for it in one of next week’s chats. See you next week!

#4-9, #multisite, #networks-sites, #summary

Matias Ventura 6:39 pm on July 14, 2017
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What’s new in Gutenberg? (14th July)

0.5.0 🦀

#core-editor, #editor, #gutenberg

Jeffrey Paul 2:27 am on July 13, 2017
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4.8.1 Bug Scrubs (part deux)

The following bug scrubs have been scheduled on tickets milestoned for 4.8.1 and the conversation will take place in #core:

Reminder of the timeline for 4.8.1 is Beta on Monday, July 17th (soft string freeze), RC on Monday, July 24th (hard string freeze), and launch on Tuesday, August 1st. In order to support that, we’ll be aiming for 0 tickets in the milestone by RC so we’ll be heavily focused on punting tickets out of the milestone.

#4-8, #4-8-1, #bug-scrub

Jeffrey Paul 2:06 am on July 13, 2017
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Dev Chat Summary: July 12th (4.8.1 week 4)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from July 12th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.8.1 planning

  • @westonruter to commit #40951: Add legacy mode to Text widget to trunk, all trunk commits need to be merged into the 4.8 branch
  • Custom HTML widget needs to be amended to an existing file to be part of the minor release, agreement to utilize wp-includes/default-widgets.php solely for the benefit of 4.8.x
  • Testing, especially #40907 and #40951 (testing steps)
  • Beta – Monday, July 17th (soft string freeze, translations begin on about a dozen strings)
  • RC – Monday, July 24th (hard string freeze)
  • Launch – Tuesday, August 1st (🎉)

Editor / Gutenberg

General announcements

#4-8, #4-8-1, #core, #core-editor, #dev-chat, #feature-plugins, #summary, #widgets