PHP Meeting Recap – June 11th

This recap is a summary of our last PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher meeting. It highlights the ideas and decisions which came up during that meeting, both as a means of documenting and to provide a quick overview for those who were unable to attend.

You can find this meeting’s chat log here.

Chat Summary

• A final decision on both the design and the copy for preventing installation of incompatible plugins was made (see #43986).
• It was agreed to use a mock-up presented by @melchoyce outside of the regular chat at the end of last week. It displays the notice on top of 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 card, thus addresses the concerns about the notice being too far away from the disabled button and about currently present information being hidden by the notice.
• For the copy, it was decided to go with the following, for the three possible circumstances:
  

  This plugin doesn’t work with your version of WordPress. [Please update WordPress].

  This plugin doesn’t work with your version of PHP. [Learn more about updating PHP].

  This plugin doesn’t work with your versions of WordPress and PHP. [Please update WordPress], and then [learn more about updating PHP].

• @afragen already created an updated 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. that implements the above. The patch needs to be thoroughly reviewed and can hopefully be committed some time next week. Here is a screenshot of what the final result will look like:

• In the second half of the meeting, discussion started about how to approach preventing plugin updates in case of incompatible PHP or WordPress versions (see #43987).
• It was decided that, in the plugins list table, each row with an incompatible version should show a notice almost like it currently does for a regular plugin update. However, the notice should use the error color instead of the warning color, and also show an error icon.
• A challenge with the copy in that notice is that it also needs to include a link to view details of the new version. A first draft was suggested, following closely what has been decided on for the plugin installations (see above). Here is the current state of the copy, again for the three possible circumstances:
  

  There is a new version of %1$s available, but it doesn’t work with your version of WordPress. [Please update WordPress], or [view version %2$s details].

  There is a new version of %1$s available, but it doesn’t work with your version of PHP. [Learn more about updating PHP], or [view version %2$s details].

  There is a new version of %1$s available, but it doesn’t work with your versions of WordPress and PHP. [Please update WordPress], and then [learn more about updating PHP]. You can also [view version %2$s details].

• It was remarked that plugins with a WordPress version that is incompatible are not made available already. This possibly means that it will only be necessary to implement notices and restrictions specific to the PHP version, however no decision has been made on that yet.
• At the time of the meeting, the patch on #43987 also included adjustments for the general “Updates” adminadmin (and super admin) screen, preventing plugin updates from there as necessary. To narrow down the scope of the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. and make the discussions more straightforward, it was decided to implement that part in a separate ticket. #44350 was then opened for that purpose.

Next week’s meeting

• Next meeting will take place on Monday, June 18, 2018 at 15:00 UTC in #core-php.
• Agenda: Check whether there are any blockers that have come up with #43986, and otherwise focus on continuing the discussion about #43987.
• If you have suggestions about this but cannot make the meeting, please leave a comment on this post so that we can take them into account.

#core-php, #php, #summary