Dev Chat Summary – May 4, 2016

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from May 4.

Update on WordPress 4.5.2

  • Lead for 4.5.2 still undecided.
    • Post-meeting it was decided that @adamsilverstein and @swissspidy will continue leading the next minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. for the 4.5 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch"..
  • 8 potential tickets for 4.5.2, only one has been committed.
  • #36534 is a serious issue that has had little activity. The issue is a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. between Imagick and OpenMP in certain configurations. @mike has reached out to a few major hosts who have fixed their configuration. @joemcgill and team are continuing the investigation into how to handle these errors.
  • The goal is to have as many 4.5.2 tickets committed to 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. by next week as possible.

Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. of tickets with the “early” keyword

  • Down to 11 tickets across 9 components https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=!closed&keywords=~early&milestone=4.6&group=component
  • #25387, #18857, and #29804 don’t have an owner yet.
  • @westonruter The three CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. `early` tickets are closely related. @delawski has been working on #34391 and the remaining items are to clean up unneeded CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets., do thorough browser testing, and testing with different themes that add custom panels/sections.

Call for designers/reviving the chats

  • Since the beginning of this cycle a few contributors requested help from the team in #design. This channel has currently 813 members but the responses are only sporadic. There is also a meeting scheduled which should happen every week on Thursday at 17:00 UTC. But last one was in January.
  • @karmatosed and @hugobaeta will take charge of reviving chats in #design on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
  • @hugobaeta will have an agenda posted by end of day today.
  • @zetaraffix volunteered to join the design team.

Feature Project Updates

Shiny Updates

  • Visual records have been posted: https://make.wordpress.org/flow/2016/05/02/shiny-update-visual-records/
  • All bugs found in that process have been fixed. @swissspidy made a a first pass at improving update-core.php.
  • User testing was tainted by an outdated WordPress install, but can still be viewed here: https://make.wordpress.org/flow/2016/05/03/shiny-updates-user-testing-plugins/
  • Another user test will be run and a review by the flow, docs, a11yAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), and i18ni18n Internationalization, or the act of writing and preparing code to be fully translatable into other languages. Also see localization. Often written with a lowercase i so it is not confused with a lowercase L or the numeral 1. Often an acquired skill. team will be requested.

Fields APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.

  • The Fields API team is requesting feedback on proposed changes to register_meta(). Please read https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/05/03/a-data-schema-for-meta/ and leave your feedback in the comments.

Customizer

  • Recap post of the last office hours: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/05/04/customize-office-hours-recap-2016-05-02/
  • #30937 (transactions) and #35210 (notification area) are the highest priorities.
  • A make/coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. post for Customizer setting validation (#34893) in the works.
  • @westonruter has also initiated a new feature plugin “JS Widgets” that will greatly improve the performance of widgets in the Customizer. An alpha state plugin can be found here: https://github.com/xwp/wp-js-widgets

Decision time for: #36753 Use system fonts for a faster, more native-feeling adminadmin (and super admin) (Font Natively)

  • Background information and rationale can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/core/features/font-natively/
  • @helen mentioned that there is 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. on #36753 and that lots of screenshots across OSes and window sizes of current state and new state are needed. Help is appreciated.
  • Because this project is already in a committable state, @helen proposed to commit this patch now.
  • Even the final decision time is still a month away no objections were called.
  • @helen will commit the patch.

Discussion: How to name new functions? get_sites/networks() vs wp_get_sites/networks()

This came up during the last multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site chat. @jeremyfelt gave a short introduction:

WP_Site_Query should have a function similar to get_posts(), get_users(), or get_comments() that allows for the simple return of results from a query.

wp_get_sites() was introduced quite a bit ago. It returns an array of arrays rather than the desirable array of WP_Site objects.

get_sites() is proposed as part of the WP_Site_Query patch to align better with the naming of posts, users, comments… and to allow for the return of an array of objects.

We need to make a decision: Does it make sense to introduce get_sites() and deprecate wp_get_sites()

I guess a broader question is do we push for more wp_ prefixed functions in situations like this or do we go with what we’ve been doing.

A similar question exists for get_networks()

  • @tfrommen objects, that introducing a new unprefixed function might be a collision with some (also unprefixed) pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party function. He proposes that the slurping the plugin repo would be a good idea.
  • @boonebgorges states a rule: Prefer prefix as a rule of thumb, but exceptions seem fine in cases like this, when DX will be improved by being internally consistent.
  • @helen: Generally I would base these kinds of decisions on what wouldn’t trip you up (or at least you trip you up less) as a developer.
  • @ipstenu will help with slurping the plugin repo for get_sites() and report the findings in #core-multisite.
  • There is currently not a consensus on prefixing functions with wp_.

Component Updates

TaxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies.

Multisite

Comments

  • Bug scrub scheduled for Monday May 9th, 2016 at 13:00 MDT in #core Slack.
  • Watch for a Make/Core post regarding Custom Comment Types
  • With 104 open tickets, the Comments team would love help confirming bugs still exist, are actually bugs, or patches 🙂
  • #33717 (Send Notification Email When a Comment is Approved From Moderation) needs some extra review and feedback.

Media

  • The media component could use a lot of love, and a bug-fix focussed release is just the sort of thing that could help.
  • @joemcgill  is planning to put out a call for volunteers on the make/core blogblog (versus network, site) and then begin using our weekly dev chat time to focus on bug-scrubs.
  • There are currently 268 open tickets in that component, so extra hands will be helpful.

Open Discussion

  • @helen brought a concern about removing the Open Sans style registration and people who might be using it as a dependency, etc. The decision was to leave the registration and move the line to the // Deprecated CSS section..
  • @ronalfy asked for a new owner of #33932 (Filters for Plugin/Theme Update Email Notifications).
  • @zstepek brought #34848 (Add support for updating post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. in bulk) up. @boonebgorges will be responding to the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. soon.
  • @spacedmonkey would like to get more eyes on #35381 (Introduce WP_Term_Query)

 

The full dev chat logs can be found here: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/core/p1462392004003183

#4-6, #dev-chat, #summary