Dev Chat Summary: October 25th (4.9 week 13)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from October 25th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.9 schedule

• Beta 4 dropped late last night / early this morning, please do help test. RC is scheduled to go out on Monday, October 30th and that entails soft string freeze.
  
• For all @committers, please let @melchoyce @westonruter know if you are able to help with commits during 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). as we’ll need two committers to approve a 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. before merging.
• Bug Scrubs are scheduled on Monday’s and Thursday’s. If you have availability to help run a scrub, please let @jbpau17 know. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
  
• Currently nine tickets that show as needs-dev-note
• Three 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. coming from @westonruter and one from @rafa8626 (#39686); all could use proofreading
  
  • @dlh to help on 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. notes, @joemcgill on MediaElement
• If anyone can help draft 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., please let @jbpaul17 know especially for things around New Action HooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same., New FilterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. Hooks, Modified Filter Hooks, and External Library Updates.
• If anyone can help populating the “Developer Happiness” section of the About page, please let @melchoyce know or add notes to #42087

Editor / 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/ update

• Gutenberg v1.5 includes metaboxMetabox A post metabox is a draggable box shown on the post editing screen. Its purpose is to allow the user to select or enter information in addition to the main post content. This information should be related to the post in some way. support and likely has advanced cases where 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 will benefit from feedback and iteration.
• You can report via GitHub, the feedback form within the Gutenberg plugin, or in #core-editor.

General announcements

• @johnbillion: The last PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 7.2 issue, #41526, needs some eyes and can still make it into 4.9 if another patch comes along. The original patch causes some warnings.
• @paaljoachim: looking for comments on #42324

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