Dev Chat Summary, January 5, 2022

Meeting start on 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/..

1. Welcome

Agenda

2. Announcements

Trunk is now open for 6.0-alpha, which means 6.0 is now underway!

WordPress 5.9 Release Candidate 1 is available.  Please download and test! You can reshare and encourage others to take part in testing RC1 on social media: TwitterFacebook.

Help test WordPress 5.9 features

Read the latest Developer Notes

3. Blogblog (versus network, site) posts to note

Post by @audrasjb: A year in core (December 29, 2021)

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/:

A Week in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.January 3, 2022 and December 27, 2021

Reminder of the revised 5.9 release schedule.

Join the discussion on 2022 release planning (December 27, 2021 post by @chanthaboune)

Proposal: Approving custom block pattern directory submissions (posted January 4, feedback by January 14, 2022)

If you’re wondering what performance improvements are slated for WordPress 5.9, @annezazu shares a post published today that gathers them all together. “Hope it helps get you excited about even speedier performance whether you’re writing a new post or hoping to improve the experience of visitors to your site.”

4. Update on the upcoming release

a) Update from @hellofromtonya

Thank you to everyone who contributed to 5.9! This is a big release with a lot of moving parts. Each you made it happen. Thank you! 

Let’s start with RC1 and what that means.

5.9 is now in the 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). (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).) cycle. What does this mean? I gave a rundown of the main highlights in this message on Slack.

The biggies of what it means:

 A hard string freeze or a hard freeze is announced when all the strings of the upcoming release are frozen including the strings of the About page. A hard freeze is the final string freeze before a release.

  • Any changes to source code will require a dev-feedback keyword and 2 core committers review with the keyword dev-reviewed.

Focus during the remaining RC cycle is on any regressions or blockers that get reported.

The milestone itself has been cleared, meaning all tickets cleared both in Gutenberg and Core.

What remains then are new things reported (during the RC) and 2 tickets for the About and Dashboard Welcome. Everything else is either closed or punted to 5.9.1 or 6.0.

RC1 also means that trunk is now open for 6.0-alpha. For 6.0, tickets marked early can move forward and get committed for early feedback, testing, and soak time. This includes some of the work reverted in 5.9 that needed more time and were punted to 6.0.

What can you do in 5.9?
Test test test. And reach out into the community to encourage feedback, testing, and folks to update and prepare their themes and plugins for 5.9.

b) A request from both the marketing and training teams

Update from @webcommsat

Volunteers are needed to help with input and checking on social media posts on 5.9 release and to write/ update materials for Learn WordPress.

You can find more about what is needed for Training in this sprint post. Get involved through the Training Team Slack channel.

If you can help give input about features which could be highlighted in social media posts and feedback on what you would want to be sharing about 5.9, get involved through the Marketing Team’s Slack channel and work on this sheet. Please let Abha know and one of the Marketing Team will be able to help with links and access.

There are further marcomms and training joint sessions on the release taking place during the next two weeks. All dates are listed in the comments on today’s dev chat agenda or on this GitHub card.

5. Calls for volunteers

  • Test: help test the WordPress 5.9 RC1 – tips and how to above
  • Training Team: need urgent help to update/ produce materials on 5.9 for Learn WordPress (more details above)
  • Marketing Team: need dev input and your favorite features of 5.9 to incorporate into generic asocial media posts on the release (more details above)
  • Notetakers for the weekly developers chat in Core. Put your name down for a future week. There’s help available and another experienced core contributor will proof notes, so you’re not on your own.

Props to @webcommsat for the agenda and the notes, and @audrasjb for reviewing. Props to @marybaum @hellofromtonya and @webcommsat for facilitating dev chat.

#5-9, #dev-chat