Dev Chat Summary: May 25th, 2016

This post summarizes the weekly dev chat held on May 25, 2016 at 14:00 MDT.

Update on WordPress 4.5.3

• Work continues on the 8 remaining tickets tagged for the release: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/minor; most tickets are either fixed or marked as commit.
• #36861 needs some testing. Please give the latest 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. a try and report your findings on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..
• Since @mike reached out to hosts and got Imagick issues fixed, #36534 is no longer critical.
• Release is still scheduled in 1-2 weeks.

Autoloading in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

• The discussion was about #36335 and #36926 which should be read by everyone.
• @azaozz raised the question “How much easier would be to do this at the same time as dropping support for PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5.2? Or rather, would it be a good enough reason to drop that support?” since PHP 5.3+ would make the compatibility shim for spl_autoload_register() superfluous.
• @ocean90 mentioned it wouldn’t be easier and it’s not a good idea to combine both topics because one is not a requirement for the other.
• No further objections for the compatibility shim were raised, #36926 was approved for commit.
• The discussion about the implementation of an autoloader didn’t come to a result because of lack of interest.

Feature project updates

Shiny Updates

• Testing instructions were added to the feature project landing page and 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 readies.
• The team got lots of feedback and fixed many bugs.
• Merged activation flow for plugins that were just installed.
• Added more QUnit tests.
• Still targeting 4.6 with no current blockers.
• Some bugs still need fixing and user tests for update-core.php and themes.
• A merge proposal and core patch also need to be worked up.
• If you haven’t already, please test the plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/shiny-updates/

Font Natively

• Edge is addressing 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. and the fix will be in Edge in the next few months.
• If you want to help with fixing font weights, please see #36753.

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. transactions/Customize Posts

• For transactions, the commit has been made for adding a setting validation model (#34893). Big thanks to #design team for their input.
• For Customize posts (#34923), a working patch has been added which connects the available nav menu items UIUI User interface with being able to create new posts/pages.
• A GIF demo that @celloexpressions prepared for the scope of the feature being proposed for core: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/raw-attachment/ticket/34923/34923.ui.1.gif
• Adding new pages via available nav menu items is still targeted for 4.6.
• Setting validation is already in 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..
• The rest of transactions will be in a future release.
• #36944 has been opened for to give early feedback when setting validation fails, allowing server-sent validation errors to be received prior to hitting save. A key UXUX User experience improvement.
• Adding a term in the Customizer is currently impossible because there is no draft status for terms.
• TODO: continue iterating on adding posts via Customizer, explore adding terms via Customizer, and improve setting validation.

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.

• There are continued efforts to improve register_meta() in #35658 so it can support additional arguments needed by both Fields API and the REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. projects.
• The REST API team is on board with the code thus far, but a decision needs to be made on whether or not they want to enforce a data_type or schema argument this early on.
• Next steps are to add unit tests for new use cases and to ensure backwards compatibility.
• #35658 is targeted for 4.6.
• The project itself is no longer treated as a feature project for 4.6.

Toolbar Experiments

• Notes from last weeks meeting surrounding strategy and design for a new Admin API can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/05/23/may-20-toolbar-and-admin-menu-meeting-summary/
• Still targeting for inclusion in 4.6 with no blockers currently.
• Next meeting is on Friday, May 27th at 16:00 UTC.

Component announcements/updates

• https://make.wordpress.org/core/components/ includes a colum for “Tickets with 0 replies”. These tickets would be great to go through during a bug scrub.

Open discussion

ID or id in object properties?

Core currently has no standard on using $object->ID vs. $object->id. WP_User currently has a magic getter for id and throws a _doing_it_wrong. Its been proposed that everything use id and have a magic getter for ID that throws a _doing_it_wrong. This would involve reversing current behavior in WP_User. This would also increase consistency in core going forward. @jeremyfelt will open a ticket for standardization (#36946).

Tickets

• #26511 is still waiting for feedback.
• @ronaldhuereca will prepare a patch for #36872.
• #12922 still needs discussion on whether or not posts should automatically be updated when a featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. is added. It seems that most people lean towards requiring an update before the featured image is saved.

The full dev chat logs can be found here: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/core/p1464206418006799

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