Dev Chat summary – January 29, 2020 (5.4 week 3)

The chat was facilitated by @davidbaumwald on this agenda.

Full meeting transcript on Slack

This devchat marked week 3 of the 5.4 release cycle.

Highlighted posts

Upcoming Releases

We are currently in week 3 since WordPress 5.4 kick-off.

Further informations:

@mapk mentioned that there is a new project board in GitHub going for the 5.4 must-haves from Gutenberg.

@garrett-eclipse raised that the Privacy team has been working through their 5.4 list and have several patches ready for committers review.

@karmatosed mentioned that the Design team is moving along for 5.4. There have been 2 triages a week running and feedback is flowing across tickets. If there’s anything a team would like feedback on, please link in design 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/. channel or surface in a triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. session. The about page squad is also starting to form.

@audrasjb pointed out that since there is no plan for a new minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. for the moment, all unfixed tickets were moved from 5.3.3 to milestone 5.4. Those which were already committed to trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. and ready to be shipped were merged into 5.3.x branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". by @sergey, so they could land in an eventual 5.3.3 security release (reminder: security releases can happen at any moment).

Components Check-in

Comments component: @imath raised tickets #39732 and #48772 which are ready to be committed. Also, he noted the Comment Post Type ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. was splitted into two different tickets. The bigger one will wait for WP 5.5.

Media component: @azaozz pointed out that the feature plugin to test lazy loading for images was just released. Please test: feedback, including just “It works!” is very welcome. Feedback can be added on the plugin’s support forum or if there are problems, on 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’s GitHub repository.

Concerning Lazyload feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins., @xkon added that testers will need posts with a lot of images and a big viewport height to see lazy loading effects. @azaozz added that the browser will still load the first 2KB of images that are going to be lazy-loaded, so looking in the console may not be an indication of exactly how it works.

@audrasjb reminded that Plugins and Themes Automatic Updates tickets (#48850 and #49199) need code review and testing:

  • Testing on multisites installations on the plugins ticket (themes autoupdate on multisites is still a work in progress – help welcome!)
  • Review from the security team (@whyisjake is going to take a look)
  • Review from very experimented coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. devs to check for eventual consistency issues between Core and new functions/filters/constants
  • Potential Unit Tests patches
  • Wider testing from every contributors

Open floor

@kjellr asked for attention to the new bi-weekly Block-based Themes Meeting. This meeting is dedicated to exploring and defining blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based themes. It’s an opportunity for folks across teams to discuss and define the future of themes as they relate to 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/’s full-site editing work.

@isabel_brison left a comment in the agenda post to encourage core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. to start a discussion about “CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets.-in-JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors.”, which is going to be investigated by the Gutenberg team. Links to the related Pull requests are listed in the comment and it’s worth a read for those interested to weight in it during further discussions.

@audrasjb talked about a new contributor (@valentinbora) who took notes of all the answers he got from the last New Contributors meeting’s facilitator and few core devs who regularly attend this meeting. He kindly provided his notes and they were put together into a FAQ for new contributors handbook page proposal. The idea would be to add new questions after each new contributor’s meetings, and refer to this handbook page when people ask for things that are already well explained in the FAQ. @marybaum proposed to do a copy review before publishing.

#5-4, #dev-chat