WordPress 4.8.1 release delayed by one day

The 4.8.1 release was due out today (August 1st), however a performance problem was raised during release preparations. Specifically, the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. in question is #35293 and its problematic commit on the 4.8 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". has now been reverted, while the changes remain on trunk. A performance fix is pending in #41501, and it may be part of a subsequent 4.8.2 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..

We’ve re-scheduled the 4.8.1 release to occur after the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. dev chat tomorrow, at August 2nd, 21:00 UTC.

In the mean time, please continue testing the release. A new 4.8.1-RC2 package (ZIP) has been published for you to triple check on your test environments. For more information on testing, see Beta Testing. The 4.8.1-RC2 release contains 29 maintenance fixes and enhancements since 4.8.0, chief among them are fixes to the rich Text widget and the introduction of the Custom HTML widget. For a full list of changes in the release, consult the tickets closed and the changesets committed.

#4-8-1