This post summarizes the weekly dev chat meeting from January 30th (agenda, Slack archive).
5.1 updates
Beta 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. 3
5.1 Beta 3 was delayed by 24 hours following issues with the PHP error recovery (aka WSOD) feature. The current plan is to release beta 3 a few hours following the dev chat today.
Schedule update
Remaining planned schedule dates remain the same, with RC 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). 1 and a hard string freeze on February 7 and a final release planned for February 21.
See also: WordPress 5.1 Development Cycle
Dev notes 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. status report
All but three dev notes planned for 5.1 have been published
@desrosj is continuing to coordinate 5.1 dev notes. There are also plans to release a Field 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. for 5.1 on the day that RC1 is released. If any component maintainers have information they would like to have included in the Field Guide, please provide them to @desrosj before February 6, 2019.
Updates from focus reps and component maintainers
Meeting notes and summaries
Other calls/proposals
- The REST 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 is aiming to have owners for every ticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. milestoned for WordPress 5.2, so could use more help if people are looking for tickets to work on.
PHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher error recovery (WSOD) update
Earlier this week, security concerns were raised about this feature, which ultimately has lead to the decision by the #core-php team to revert this feature from 5.1 and try again in 5.2 in order to adequately address the issues identified. For additional context, people can reference the original ticket (#44458) and the new ticket created to track new refinements (#46130).
Continued work on this feature will be coordinated in #core-php on Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and during weekly meetings on Mondays at 16:00 UTC.
Additional follow up
- @flixos90 is in touch with the original reporter of the security concern.
- @aaroncampbell agreed to follow up with the author of the ZDNet article to inform them about the feature being removed. The article has since been updated to reflect this change.
- From a marketing perspective, @joostdevalk reminded that because of the open nature of our project, these kinds of things are going to happen, which isn’t itself a concern, as long as we are actively following up.
Open floor
@kadamwhite mentioned that the upcoming Gutenberg 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/ roadmap would likely require enhancements to the REST API in Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and suggested that there be closer coordination between the editor team and the REST API team regarding implementation of new features or enhancements.
It was suggested that when new features require knowledge from other teams, that the people working on those features reach out via component slack channels or in comments to component/team meeting notes, which should be published consistently by all active teams.
#5-1, #dev-chat
