Making preparations for 3.8

As mentioned previously, 3.8 development officially opens shortly after 3.7 ships. With the first beta of 3.7 behind us and the final release scheduled for mid-October, it’s time to talk about what’s expected of feature plugins.

@nacin mentioned at last week’s dev chat that 3.7 will likely branch at the WordCamp Europe contributor day, on October 7. At this point, most coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. developer focus will be on shipping 3.7. However, feature plugins that want to be considered for 3.8 should be ready by October 14 to give everyone time to review them.

What does being ready mean? Here’s what will be examined:

  • a strong and well-tested user experience
  • fully-baked design
  • positive feedback from the community
  • core-quality code
  • no major bugs or issues
  • a belief that the feature belongs in WordPress core

Some of the above is subjective and will vary from feature to feature. If you have questions, look to a lead developer for guidance.

Of the feature plugins listed, the furthest along are MP6 and global admin search, with Dash not far behind. Plugins in the “feedback” stage should be prepared to answer the question “Why should we include this in core?” As of today, they should prepare their code for core, removing anything unnecessary and making the feature into a patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. that can be easily merged with core.

tl;dr

  • Feature plugins wanting consideration for 3.8 should be ready for presentation and inclusion by October 14.
  • Feature plugins will undergo review shortly after 3.7 ships.
  • Plugins must be ready to merge when the merge window opens.

#3-8, #core-plugins