Dev Chat summary, July 7, 2021

With just two weeks left in the 5.8 release cycle, @jeffpaul led the devchat on this agenda.

Announcements

RCrelease candidate 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). 2 has landed! And it needs you, to help test it in as many ways as possible and chase down any last-minute bugs. For details, check out the RC 2 release post here.

As it happens, @desrosj reported in and said the release is in great shape:

The milestone only has three bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. tickets remaining that may require changes (excluding release related task tickets and two tickets needing only to be backported). We are in great shape heading into RC3 and final release. 

@desrosj

Blogblog (versus network, site) Post Highlights

In the afternoon chat, @jeffpaul led off with the RC 2 release post above, and it is indeed worth a second read, if you’re so inclined.

Other posts of note:

The 5.8 Field Guide is out. Docs lead @milana_cap has done a masterful job of pulling it all together. So if you’re getting a theme or a 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 ready for 5.8, the Guide is your most reliable source of timely, topical information on the changes that will affect your products and the processes you use to get them out the door.

Catch up on the latest feedback the Full Site Editing crew has received with this post from @annezazu. And while we’re at it, here’s the FSE team’s latest chat summary.

And @audrasjb is back with another Week in Core, celebrating 52 contributors (five who are brand-new!) and nine committers who got things going this week.

@jeffpaul thanked the authors and everyone who commented or otherwise helped share news or knowledge this past week and shared this reminder:

We are now in the RC period. That means we’re in a hard string freeze, and the final planned release candidaterelease candidate 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)., RC 3, is now just FIVE days away, on July 13. The 5.8 release is TWELVE days away, on July 20.

(Ed. note: Where has the year gone?)

With no seemingly urgent business connected to the release (see @desrosj on the state of the milestone, above) @jeffpaul referred the group to a post from @mapk on care and influence in the WordPress community.

Components check-in

@sergeybiryukov reported in on Build/Test Tools. Referring the community to this ticket on PHPUnit 8.x, he described the challenges that come with adding support for PHPUnit 8.x and 9.x, since they’re not compatible with versions of PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher older than 7.1.

@marybaum commented that Help/About is looking good and then took a minute to thank all the people involved with the About page.

Open Floor

Pivoting from @sergeybiryukov‘s discussion of PHPUnit 8.x and 9.x, @azaozz opened a discussion of when WordPress might stop supporting PHP versions earlier than 7.1. The upshot, according to @sergeybiryukov: WordPress ends support for a PHP version when it’s running fewer than 5% of sites. At the moment, 8.83% of WordPress sites run PHP 5.6, and 5.23% are running on PHP 7.0.

Marketing Rep and Help/About co-maintainer @webcommsat would like to know what your favorite 5.8 feature is, so the Marketing team can write some social-media posts about it. You can share your favorites with her or @marybaum directly or in threads on this week’s marketing meeting, which run asynchronously through Friday.

@webcommsat would also like some more posts on key features in the release. To add one or more, use the commenting feature in this Google Doc.

#5-8, #core, #dev-chat, #summary