Hello Friends! Here’s what happened in the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. devchat on Wednesday, October 15th, 2020, 05:00 UTC and Wednesday, October 15th , 2020, 20:00 UTC, following this agenda .

05:00 UTC core dev chat @thewebprincess facilitated the meeting and took notes. Find the full Slack archive here.
20:00 UTC core dev chat @thelmachido facilitated the meeting and @thewebprincess took notes. The full Slack archive can be viewed here.

Both groups followed this agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/10/13/dev-chat-agenda-october-14th/

Announcements

• APAC based core committercommitter A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component., @peterwilsoncc has taken up a role that will allow him to contribute to core 4 days a week 🎉
• A group is gathering around issues that can be moved to a minor release to clear the path for 5.6 and address issues like removing the embed blocks for FB an Instagram due to their withdrawal of support. If you can help, here’s where to dig in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/minor @whyisjake will be organizing the release, so reach out if you want to get involved.

No Highlighted Blogblog (versus network, site) posts this week

Updates from Component Maintainers/Focus Leads

• Privacy Component – It would be nice to get some eyes on the accepted/assigned ones from this list
• General: PHP8 call for testing is a high priority, expanding test coverage, creating tickets for issues found.
• Build/Test Tools:  A new NPM script was added for using the Composer-installed version of PHPUnit: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/49099. 
• Test Focus cohort has a dedicated test scrub for the Gutenberg Widget Screen Friday October 16th at 13:30UTC
• Twenty Twenty One translatable strings were pushed to GlotPress, theme can be translated now https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-themes/twentytwentyone/
• The Upgrade/Install team is currently working on major core release auto-updates user interface, with the invaluable help of designers @karmatosed and @estelaris. They plan to get a robust design implementation by the end of the week (or Monday)/
• @francina highlighted a PR that will generate a weekly auto post to core to solicit reports from Focus Leads and Component Maintainers, and reminded people that if they’re no longer available for contributing as maintainers.
  

Open Floor

• @mikeschroder observed some failing tests for some hosts and the 0500 UTC crew dug in to find the cause in a package update – resolution to add an issue to the board to be included for the next 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/ release.
• @isabel_brison threw out that if anyone was keen to work on or review editor-related stuff, the 5.6 project board has a few things to pick up in To do and Needs Review columns 
• The state of PHP8 support in core generated a fair amount of discussion. Rather than summarize here, please review the archive of the conversation in Slack for all the detail. Major takeaways are the 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. are in progress in relation to communication around the significant number of breaking changes – Helen called for a deliberate effort towards outreach of this change which has extensive discussion to follow. Furthermore @omarreiss suggests declaring WP incompatible with PHP8 with a useful perspective from @jrf in response. Lots to dig in there, and there will be marketing and outreach efforts to ensure widespread awareness.
  • Related, @timothyblynjacobs highlighted this issue regarding adding a header that declares PHP version compatibility
• @justinahinon opened a discussion with a suggestion regarding pairing existing contributors with new ones to build connection and support newbies.
• @helen asked for a rundown on significant issues to complete before 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. 1 is released,
  • Major Core auto-updates opt-in UIUI User interface
  • Twenty Twenty-One
  • Widgets as Blocks
  • JQuery 3.5x
  • Issues on this list

Next Dev Chat meetings

The next meetings will take place on Wednesday, October 15 2020, 05:00 UTC and Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 20:00 UTC in the #core 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. Please feel free to drop in with any updates or questions.

Thanks to @francina for proofreading this post.

#5-6, #dev-chat, #summary