These are the weekly notes for the WP Auto-updates team meeting that happened on Tuesday August 18, 2020. You can read the full transcript on the core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-auto-updates 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/. channel.
Reminder: WP Auto-updates Feature has been merged into WordPress Core so bugs reports and enhancements requests should now happen on Core Trac.
During this meeting, the core-auto-updates team looked at the tickets currently milestoned to the next minor (5.5.1) and major (5.6) versions of WordPress.
#50280: Enable auto-updates shows for plugins with no support (Multisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site Themes screen)
@pbiron is working on this ticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..
#50988: Provide option to disable emails about auto-updates
As commented by @johnbillion, “We don’t want to discourage users from using the auto-updates feature for plugins and themes just because the emails are annoying”. The team discussed several options to fix the issue:
- Leave it as it is currently.
- Add a new interface item to disable emails: not realistic for 5.5.1 and maybe not suitable even for the next major, as per the “Decision not option” WordPress rule.
- Send only weekly digests emails: not the best option as a digest potentially a week later a failed update is not useful. If users want to receive email notifications, they want to receive it right after the update occured.
- Email only when an update failed: a successful update doesn’t ensure users that nothing was broken by the plugin 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/theme.
- Reduce the auto update frequency to once a week: it will need to be able to distinguish major and minor updates, and also security updates. Not realistic for 5.5.1.
- A core plugin maintained by the WP team for tweaking these emails specifically: the team agreed this is something to consider, eventually before 5.5.1. @pbiron, @audrasjb and @ronalfy expressed interest to work on this solution.
- Don’t send emails for patch 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. releases (x.x.1 bumps): the problem is that plugin authors don’t massively use proper versioning.
- Add more complete filters so plugin authors can manage email notification better if they know what plugin/theme failed to update: this is the chosen option for 5.5.1. @audrasjb added a patch for this in ticket #50988.
#50875: Introduce a wrapper for the ‘auto_update_{$type}’ filter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. checks
This small enhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. is milestoned for WP 5.6. Needs patch.
#50848: Clarify the usage of null for “auto_update_{$type}” filter
Milestoned to WP 5.5.1. @audrasjb added a patch in the ticket.
#50907: Add a method to opt-in to core auto-updates
This ticket was opened to handle Core auto-updates which is one of the key projects for WordPress 5.6.
#auto-updates, #core-auto-updates, #feature-autoupdates
