Dev Chat Summary: August 23rd (4.9 week 4)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from August 23rd (agendaSlack archive).

Review 4.9-early tickets

  • Items in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. all seem to need owners, especially since they were all tagged 4.8-early as well
  • Should also include work on CodeMirror which needs more testing and contributions
    • Can currently be downloaded from the latest tagged release
    • Feedback is best on GitHub Issues for now, until the 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 is merged
    • Will work to get it into the w.org repo for easier installation
  • #39693 could use a review from another committercommitter A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component.

Gutenberg testing

  • GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ just released v0.9.0 and if you haven’t tested in a while this would be a good release to get into testing and provide feedback
  • Development is progressing and feedback is really important
  • Two tests are described in the handbook, you can also give your feedback via the plugin forum

Future support for ancient versions of WordPress

  • Discussion started previously in #core
  • @jorbin: is it time for us to stop backporting so far? Does anyone object? If not, Does anyone have ideas for how to go about it, or suggestions for me to put together a proposal on it?
  • @joemcgill: I would like to see a published proposal outlining reasons, usage data, and any tradeoffs/considerations and leave a bit of time for feedback before definitely doing this.
  • W.org Stats shows 3.7 is about 0.4%
  • @mikeschroder: We chatted about this at the summit, and about enabling protections for upgrades for major versions like we do for minor ones.
  • @ocean90: We should start with 3.7.z to 3.8.z. Note that this is already a huge step because 3.8 includes the new adminadmin (and super admin) design.
  • @jorbin: I will work on the proposal. I’ll pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” some of the committers and other active contributors who have contributed to this conversation to review it before publishing.

General announcements

#4-9, #dev-chat, #summary