Dev Chat Summary: May 3rd (4.8 week 1)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from May 3rd (agendaSlack archive).

4.8 Timing

  • 4.8 schedule page has been published
  • 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. 1 is next Friday, May 12th; Release Candidaterelease 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). is Thursday, May 25th; target launch is Thursday, June 8th; and WCEU quickly follows June 15-17
  • WordPress 4.8 will be the first “major” release of 2017 and ideally includes the TinyMCE inline element / link boundaries, new media widgets, WYSIWYGWhat You See Is What You Get What You See Is What You Get. Most commonly used in relation to editors, where changes made in edit mode reflect exactly as they will translate to the published page. in text widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., and the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. / meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. dashboard upgrade to the “news” section
  • Assuming all goes as currently planned, we have just over a week to commit any new enhancements or feature requests
  • Concerns were raised to the compressed timeline for 4.8 and the stresses of getting a major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope. out in ~5 weeks
  • Recommendations were made to the effect of allowing 4.8 to progress more gradually and target a July/August timeframe for launch
  • Update since devchat: Confirmed existing 4.8 timeline with @matt, plan is to proceed with the enhancements that are ready now, anything that’s not ready will wait for an upcoming release

4.8 Bug Scrubs

  • Will publish times for upcoming scrubs to review items in the 4.7.5 and 4.8 milestones in a separate Make/CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. post
  • @jbpaul17 & @desrosj will run general scrubs, @flixos90 will deal with 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 tickets in the multisite-specific 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.-scrub next Monday
  • Please reach out to @jbpaul17 if you have availability to run a general or focused scrub on tickets in the 4.7.5/4.8 milestones over the next wee

4.8 Dev Notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. / 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.

  • Regardless of final decision on 4.8 timeline, we need to get started on creating Dev Notes and assembling the Field Guide
  • Several comments were made about potential improvements to the Dev Notes / Field Guide during the 4.7 Retrospective
  • In summary: have more than one person own the Field Guide coordination and Dev Notes creation; more Dev Notes are better than less; create component-specific Dev Notes where feasible
  • Updated listing of Dev Notes needed and those responsible:
    • 1) Editor: TinyMCE inline element / link boundaries – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 2) Editor: TinyMCE version 4.6 – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 3) Editor: Edge fixes – @iseulde & @azaozz
    • 4) Customize: Media widgets (#32417)
    • 5) Customize: Visual text widget (#35243)
    • 6) Customize: Dynamically-resized controls pane (#32296)
    • 7) WordCamp / meetup dashboard upgrade to the “news” section
  • If you can help write one of the unassigned Dev Notes above or have others that you feel should be written, please comment on this post or let @jbpaul17 know
  • Per the Releasing Major Versions page, we should aim for Dev Notes around Beta 1 and the Field Guide by the Release Candidate; so please get started writing those Dev Notes, thanks!

Multisite Update

  • Discussed yesterday the idea of introducing ms-site.php and ms-network.php files for the real site/networknetwork (versus site, blog) APIs we’ve been introducing over the past couple releases (and will continue to introduce further functions)
  • All functions currently reside in ms-blogs.php which is getting rather cluttered
  • We propose introducing those two files and moving some functions in there and are looking for concerns from the team
  • Another question was whether they would need to be included from ms-blogs.php (for backwards compatibility) or whether we’re fine including them in wp-settings.php
  • Relates to: #40647 (Introduce ms-site.php and ms-network.php files)
  • Feedback would ideally be left on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. above

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