Dev chat summary: January 12, 2022

@webcommsat and @marybaum led the meeting on this agenda.

See the real-time chat in the Make WordPress Slack.

And last week’s notes are at Dev chat summary, January 5, 2021.

Announcements

WordPress 5.9 Release Candidate 2 has landed. Please download and test! Also, please feel free to share the package and invite your friends to test the 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). for themselves.

Help test WordPress 5.9 features. You can test in general or find prompts for daily features to test in  #fse-outreach-experiment.

Also, share the details of the new features with your teams and networks – Read the latest Developer Notes

@nalininonstopnewsuk asked about testing deadlines and current focuses from a question from the marketing meeting. @hellofromtonya: Testing and feedback can be ongoing. But for regressions or bugfixes to land in the final release, these would need to be reported, fixed, and committed 24 hours before the final release, which is on 25 January 2022.

Blogblog (versus network, site) posts to note

A year in core (December 29, 2021)

What’s new in Gutenberg 12.3 release (5 January 2022)

A Week in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.January 10, 2022

A reminder of the revised 5.9 release schedule.

Join the discussion on 2022 release planning (December 27, 2021 post by @chanthaboune). This is still open for discussion. No current closing date.

Proposal: Approving custom block pattern directory submissions (posted January 4, feedback by January 14, 2022)
Proposed changes to javascript coding standards for full prettier compatibility 

The 5.9 Field Guide brings together the developer notes about every change in the new release. It’s a must-read if you build themes or plugins!

Update on 5.9 release

@hellofromtonya:

First of all, thank you to everyone who has contributed to the 5.9 release.

The final release is in less than 13 days on 25 January and it is on track to release on that day. There are currently no blockers or red flags. Everyone has come together across Core and 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/ to make the revised schedule happen on time as promised.

Release Candidate (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 landed yesterday and is available for testing and feedback. Please, test test test test. Regressions and bugs introduced in the RC cycle are priority to find and fix before the final release. Your help is needed to test and report. 

When is the next release? Release Candidate 3 will be on 18 January 2022. You are all invited to join and actively participate in the release party.

As a reminder, 5.9 is in a hard string freeze. Any string changes must be critically necessary — and nearly unanimously agreed as such before they show up in the 5.9 package. Why? Translationtranslation The process (or result) of changing text, words, and display formatting to support another language. Also see localization, internationalization. teams are working hard translating the release and in many cases, translations are done. String changes impact not only the translators but users. Please cautiously recommend string changes only where it’s critically necessary.

One more reminder, with 5.9 in RC, code changes require two core committers: one to review and approve the backportbackport A port is when code from one branch (or trunk) is merged into another branch or trunk. Some changes in WordPress point releases are the result of backporting code from trunk to the release branch. to 5.9 and the second to do the review and actual backport commit. Why? This is on purpose to make sure code changes are necessary and respect the release processes. With all that said, 5.9 is less than two weeks from full final release.

Additional updates

Last week, a security update, 5.8.3, arrived. @audrasjb also confirmed that updates dropped for older versions, from 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". 3.7 to 5.8, to patchpatch 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. the same issues.

Component Maintainers update

Until 5.9 final release on January 25, the team is skipping component updates unrelated to 5.9. If any maintainer has something to add, please add it to the comments.

Open Floor

The core team is looking for notetakers. The idea is to create a pool and encourage more contributors, and spread the responsibility around.
@webcommsat: at and after last week’s meeting, there was a discussion about the usefulness of an advance rota for people to volunteer to write summaries for dev chat.

Writing notes is a great way to review what is happening — and learn more about items you might be interested in. Some other teams find it easier to have a rota running a couple of weeks in advance, where people can volunteer in advance rather than just asking on the day.

And when you volunteer, you are not going it alone. There’s lots of help, you can ask questions just about anytime, and at least one other person will review and help with edits too.

Finally, the summaries are really helpful for people who cannot join the live meeting or are in different timezones, but who still want to be part of what’s happening in core. So it’s a really important task. It’s a great way to get involved and contribute!

Volunteers invited for notes on:
12 Jan – Estela
19 Jan –
26 Jan –
2 Feb –
9 Feb –

@davidbaumwald: Yeah, sometimes not everyone can make the meeting, so it’s tough to find volunteers. … One perk of writing notes: You get to become an author on Make WordPress/Core.

@estelaris commented that it is a great way of meeting the team that is actually building WordPress and learn from them. @webcommsat mentioned about creating a schedule and asked anyone who would like to take notes during dev chat to post in the #core channel or comment on this summary.

There is a call for volunteers on the marketing and training teams to support 5.9, specifically in the next two weeks. You can reach out to them in their 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/. channels.

Next meeting

Dev Chat will take place next week, Wednesday 19 January 2022 at 20:00 UTC in the Make WordPress Core Slack.

Props: Dev Chat summary by @estelaris and @webcommsat. Thanks to @marybaum for proofing.

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