Dev Chat Summary: January 17th (4.9.3 week 1)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from January 17th (agenda, Slack archive).

4.9.2 release

• 4.9.2 was released yesterday.
  
• This is a security and maintenance release for all versions since WordPress 3.7. We strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

4.9.3 planning

• Updated timeline is 4.9.3-beta1 on Tuesday, January 23rd; 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). on Monday, January 29th; and still aim for Tuesday, January 30th for release.
  
• Currently no major bugs, so planning for a regular maintenance release.
• Bug scrub times will be announced on Make/CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
• 4.9.3 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. will get a Make/Core post to help get people's attention on it.

Updates from focus leads and component maintainers

• The Editor team recently released Gutenberg v2.0 and will begin regular 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/ 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 at 17:00 UTC on Thursdays separately from their weekly meeting. Please 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.” @jbpaul17 (@jeffpaul on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.) if you have interest in assisting with bug scrubs.
  
• The REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. team wants to get dev opinions on a register_meta change proposal that will becoming to a Make/Core post soon.

General announcements

• @jorbin: Reminder that breaking changes (even if they are only breaking code that was publicly released for a few months) should always have a Dev Notedev 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. published on Make/Core.
  
  • 4.8 and 4.9 had shorter beta/RC windows. It would be interesting to analyze and see how that affected bugs reported during those windows and in the near term after release. It would also be interesting to see how that affected the number of reverts. That data might show longer beta/RC windows are necessary, but we should not rush a decision without numbers backing up the analysis.
    
  • Note that @jbpaul17 added a step to check for 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. to the Releasing Minor Versions handbook page.

Next meeting

The next meeting will take place on January 24, 2018 at 21:00 UTC / January 24, 2018 at 21:00 UTC in the #core Slack channel. Please feel free to drop in with any updates or questions. If you have items to discuss but cannot make the meeting, please leave a comment on this post so that we can take them into account.

#4-9-3, #core, #dev-chat, #summary