Dev Chat Summary: March 30, 2022

1. Welcome

The agenda followed in this week’s WordPress developer chat meeting.

Link to the start of the meeting on Slack

Meeting facilitated by @marybaum and @webcommsat.

2. Announcements

What’s new in Gutenberg 12.9 (March 30, 2022)
A big thanks to the team in getting this out earlier so we can include it in the dev chat meeting.

3. Blogblog (versus network, site) posts for dev chat awareness

  • A Week in Core (March 28, 2022)
  • Ask your questions on the Full Site Editing (FSE) program – this third round closes on March 30, 2022
  • The new pattern creator is live – you can build, edit, and submit blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. patterns to the Pattern Directory. Open to anyone with a WordPress.org user account.
  • Enabling WebP by default – thanks to @adamsilverstein for this great summary of the feature. (March 28, 2022)
  • Examples for extending WordPress/Gutenberg with blocks – GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo. Call for reviewers and new examples, @welcher
  • Learn WordPress Social Learning spaces MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. has regular discussions by @DaisyO on Block Themes on Fridays via WordPress Social Learning

@annezazu: hoping to have a new call for testing for the FSE Outreach program out this week if I can. She has a fun idea planned that will explore creating a new type of template, using block locking, and more. Stay tuned in #fse-outreach-experiment channel 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/. for an announcement on when it is live.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to posts and gives their time. You are all awesome!

4. Updates on the Releases

a) Next major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope.: 6.0

 Bug Scrub schedule for 6.0 and that this list is regularly updated.

Update on the 6.0 walkthrough planned for 5 April 2022.

Update from @annezazu:

WordPress 6.0 continues to progress nicely! Outside of the product walkthrough next week and enabling WebP by default updates, I wanted to highlight a few things:

  • 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/ 13.0 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). (the last Gutenberg release for inclusion in 6.0) is likely going to be pushed by a few days to Friday, April 8th to allow for more time for PRs ahead of feature freeze/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. This has happened the last few major releases so is in line with what’s worked in the past.
  • There is a new issue to coordinate backporting PHP changes for WordPress 6.0. This is a current priority for the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor tech leads. Earlier at the core editor meeting, @gziolo  invited everyone who worked on the PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher changes in this WordPress release cycle to check the issue and report the status of the code introduced.
  • I’ve proposed a new role for the release squad that’s under consideration for Core Editor Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. lead to help ensure feedback shared in the Gutenberg GitHub repo is properly handled/flagged/etc. This is meant to buttress current triage efforts and provide a layer of focus.

Update from @peterwilsoncc

I’ve spent the last few days going through tickets marked early to evaluate how close they are to a suitable 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.. As the definition of early is really being stretched by now, I’ve been bumping a few of those. There are still a number of enhancements on the milestone that need reviews and/or patches so if committers could look at those.

@Craig Francis has been working on a patch for #52506, I’ve asked for second, third and fourth eyes on it from some committers and shared it with the security team for review.

Next minor: 5.9.3

@audrasjb: releasing WP 5.9.3 RC 1 after dev chat. Everything has been committed. @sergeybiryukov will handle mission control. The milestone is cleared and the announcement post is ready for Make/Core. Everyone is welcome to help test the package.
Final release is scheduled for Tuesday April 5, 2022. [Date updated]
Post meeting update: 5.9.3 RC1 release is out.

5. Open Floor

TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. Ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. 55015

@webcommsat: From the 5.9.3 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. scrub on Monday, we have this ticket #55015 that needs a patch. The bug is reproducible.

@audrasjb: the ticket title doesn’t reflect very well the real issue. It happens on sites running with WP in a sub-directory and needing access to the default themes, like, for example, on Bedrock-like envs.

@annezazu to follow up.

Request from @gziolo
There is a tracking issue to coordinate the process of backporting PHP changes from the Gutenberg 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 to WordPress core. They will use Gutenberg issues ticket 39889 to audit all the new functionality added. They want to ensure it’s ready and meets all WP core requirements. Following the recommendation from @peterwilsoncc, they want to use smaller patches for this WordPress release to make the whole process smoother.

Trac Ticket 55121
@sc0ttkclark: requested some consensus on this #55121 for 5.9.x .
@peterwilsoncc: There was a decision on approach a few weeks ago but I haven’t had time to work on a patch (not just for this ticket). 

Trac Ticket 48222
@sabernhardt: #48222 ‘Show password’ button overlaps with the LastPass icon. Requested more attention on this ticket. It makes a significant change to the password visibility toggle button on (only) the login screens.
@clorith highlighted related tickets: #3534 and #9883 to try and get a unified solution.
@peterwilsoncc has added comments, and favors a single unified solution too.

Trac Ticket 19859
#19859 Bulk edit missing the ability to add tags. This has been highlighted in the component bug srub. @paaljoachim has added a comment today to help take it forward. @joedolson is looking at other bulk edit tickets and will look at this too.

Reminder: bug scrub for the Bulk Edit/ Quick Edit component, Mondays 20:00 UTC in the core Slack.

@bph: Every Thursday, Ryan Welcher runs live programming streams at 14:30 UTC on his Twitch Channel covering block and Gutenberg development topics. Tomorrow he will work on how to create a plugin custom setting screen in preparation for his WCEU Workshop.

Next meeting: 6 April 2022, 20:00 UTC

Props to: @marybaum and @webcommsat for facilitating the meeting, @webcommsat for the dev chat summary, and to @annezazu and @audrasjb for the review.

Could you volunteer next week for the summary?

#5-9-3, #6-0, #dev-chat, #summary