Dev Chat Summary: December 7th (4.7 launch week)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from December 7th (Slack archive).

Reminders

• Schedule: Tuesday, December 6th was launch day for WordPress 4.7 “Vaughan”.
  • Minor releases will continue to follow the philosophy of trying to fix more bugs than we create.
• Bug Scrubs: Two scheduled for this week, a general one on Thursday and a Customize one on Friday. Details for these scrubs have been posted on Make/Core.

4.7 Issues Reported

• Caches not always clearing, not something we can fix, but seems to be the most common problem
• Couple of reports around fatals related to WP_Hook, one traced to APC the cause of the other is still unknown
  • #39132: WP 4.7, object-cache.php breaks the site if APC is not enabled in php
• We’re unable to pinpoint why lots of folks who meet the requirements still don’t have PDF thumbnails
  • Are there more specific requirements beyond “you need Imagik, ImageMagick and Ghostscript” perhaps specific versions?
  • Many problems so far there have been outright lack of Ghostscript installed, so having the gs info when reporting bugs would be great
  • Discussion continued on capturing ghostscript, Imagick and ImageMagick versions details via a plugin (e.g., a hidden wp-admin/debug.php, https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/)
• Several reports of rest_cannot_edit and similar things from the users endpoints
• Reports of people getting denied access to the adminadmin (and super admin) area, issue appears to all be caching plugins not being cleared properly
• #39104: Customize: starter content home menu item needs to be a link, not a page
  • This is concerning for back-compatability and needs to have a coordinated Twenty Seventeen update. The usability implications are somewhat concerning for new sites being created with 4.7.0.
• #39146: plugin.php gives error on do_all_hook() function
• #39150: Empty JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. Payload Causes rest_invalid_json
• Thanks to @macmanx and @clorith and all of the people volunteering in the forums! Would be great for everyone to help answer questions in the forums, its a great way to understand the problems that users are having.
  • https://wordpress.org/support/view/no-replies/ is a great place to start
  • Support handbook as reference for those helping out

4.7.1 Planning

• Discussion on targeting 4.7.1 before the holidays in December 2016 or aiming for January 2017
  • Timing depends heavily on the severityseverity The seriousness of the ticket in the eyes of the reporter. Generally, severity is a judgment of how bad a bug is, while priority is its relationship to other bugs. and type of issue(s), and not the amount of issues
  • Target is to get close to a 4.7.1 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). by the end of the year
  • Two 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. scrubs happening this week (see the Bug Scrubs reference in Reminders section above) that will give us an idea of what’s realistically close to being ready for a December release.
• No immediate Release LeadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release. for 4.7.1
• Handbook reference for releasing minor versions

4.7 Retrospective

• We failed at getting the field guideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. and email to 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 dev out early though. We have aimed to have that out around betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 2 and usually end up getting it out around RC the last few releases.
• We will post a general request for feedback on Make/CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to capture Retrospective input
• We will review the feedback and then present it for discussion during the dev chat on December 21st and agree on action items on how we can improve in the future

#4-7, #core, #dev-chat, #summary