Notes from the weekly WordPress Developers Chat, which takes place on Wednesdays at 20:00 UTC in the core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. channel of the Make WordPress Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. All are welcome to attend.
To view the content from any of the Slack links listed, you will need a Making WordPress Slack account to view.
1. Welcome
Dev Chat is for everyone. This meeting is not for making decisions but for sharing updates about the next releases, Trac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets, component maintainers and more.
Meeting preparation and co-hosts: Props to @webcommsat and @marybaum.
The agenda is structured to help new contributors or those new to core or releases follow along more easily, and to make it easier for notetakers and for accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility).
The meeting agenda.
Link to the start of the meeting on Slack
2. Announcements
- WordPress 6.1 Beta 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 now available
https://wordpress.org/news/2022/09/wordpress-6-1-beta-1-now-available/
Thank you to everyone involved and contributors who came to test at the earlier release party.
3. Blog (versus network, site) Posts and important links
Twenty Twenty Two (TT2) theme accessibility discussion
Start of the discussion on Slack
@annezazu highlighted a cross-team discussion on releasing a new version of Twenty Twenty Two theme so that the committers could add the accessibility-ready label to it ahead of 6.1. This was raised as a possibility as it would be the first block 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. theme with that label, opening the door for more people to be able to explore using various Full Site Editing (FSE) features.
@audrasjb: if adding the accessibility-ready tag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) to TT2 is that important, then suggest to only release this change (the above commit), and not all the other changes milestoned in 6.1.
@joedolson:
– It’s a minor fix, but the theme is less accessible right now than it will be when 6.1 is available.
– elates to the Trac ticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #56067 query navigation arrow icons. Accessibility image requirements
– confirmed the theme would not pass the accessibility-ready criteria with this bug 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..
Actions:
- @annezazu: The decision feels clear to me to wait for 6.1.
- Follow the discussion on the accessibility-ready tag for the TT2 theme: these are mostly in the Trac ticket #55172. @annezazu will add a recap of the discussion on the ticket.
4. Releases
a) The next major 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. is 6.1.
The Call for Testing for 6.1 was published earlier today.
Actions: The post on testing is really valuable part of the process, and lots of useful information on how to take part.
@jeffpaul: main update from the squad is that the Beta 1 is available and testing is strongly desired please and thanks!
b) @jeffpaul highlighted the following issues to continue discussion on the relevant Trac tickets: should the contributors revert them before Beta 2 on September 27? Is there some other more optimal result? Tickets #56400 and #19898.
Actions request: read and add directly on the tickets, particularly to comment 8 on ticket #56400 on the discussion on the naming of things.
c) Useful links and next release cycle dates
WordPress 6.1 Development cycle
Bug scrub schedule for 6.1
Beta 2 release will be next Tuesday, September 27, 2022 starting at 16:00 UTC in the #core Slack channel. @jeffpaul: All are welcome, any and all testing will be welcome.
d) Discussion on date of the 6.1 release
Slack thread
On today’s agenda, comment from @marctison75 relating to the date of the 6.1 release:
“…are you aware that the release day (November 1, 2022) is a public holiday in many European countries (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Croatia, Austria…)?”
Discussion points focused on:
- this date appears to be a public holiday that affects many countries. It is also a public holiday in many countries in Europe, parts of South America, Africa, and further.
- sensitivity to public holidays given comments about avoiding weekends
- uncertainty about what dates could be changed at this time. Need to avoid the US elections
- decision to be made by the release squad to determine what’s best, discussion valuable to take place in core/ dev chat. Availability of release squad members needed will be the key factor
- question on whether the release date could be moved by just one day to November 2, 2022, like for Beta 1?
- traditionally Tuesday’s are the planned release days based on past experience
- primary concern is surrounding core auto-updates:
- a lot of hosts are likely to auto-update irrespective of a public holiday
- generally hosts auto-update when they have people on site to handle any issues so weekends are avoided
- consider hosts outside the US too
- a host may auto-update without realizing the implications for the users and any public holidays they have
- auto-update can be enabled by any site owner via
update-core.php or by filter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output., not only hosts
- avoid days too close to the weekend.
- Monday is dry run day, better to avoid dry run falling on a Sunday
Actions:
@davidb: Let the Release coordinators discuss in 6.1 channel and send up the flagpole if necessary. There’s never a best time for to these things. It’s always a compromise.
@jeffpaul: Ok, we will work to sort out with release leads whether an alternate day for the release may be desired, though I imagine folks would complain about Monday of that week with the holiday following. More to come hopefully by next dev chat.
@webcommsat thanked those who had raised the issue and all the comments. Asked release squad leads to also add a comment to the dev chat summary with any decision.
5. Component maintainers and tickets
@sergeybiryukov: Date/Time: Some fixes were made to ensure that timezone strings deprecated in newer PHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher versions are handled correctly by WordPress. Thanks @jrf and @costdev. Ticket #56468 for more details.
Build/Test Tools, General, I18N Internationalization, or the act of writing and preparing code to be fully translatable into other languages. Also see localization. Often written with a lowercase i so it is not confused with a lowercase L or the numeral 1. Often an acquired skill.: Permalinks: No major news this week
@webcommsat: About/ Help and Quick/ Bulk Edit: couple of issues we are trying to move forward. More on Monday in our working session.
6. Open Floor
a) @marybaum gave a welcome to our new contributors who helped with dev chat at WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US!
b) Query on the Canonical Plugins post
@costdev: A couple of questions that others may know the answer to:
- Is this a decision or a proposal?
- What does this mean for WebP? Is it going into Core at all, or has it been blocked?
- What does this mean for other in-development features for Core?
- Do we have a criteria for what is acceptable for Core, and what should be a Canonical plugin 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? Or are all features Canonical Plugins unless they’re a “runaway success” as Matt said in the post?
-
@jeffpaul gave a reply to these questions from his perspective:
- Is this a decision or a proposal?
- @jeffpaul: It’s from Matt, so I would read that as a decision.
- What does this mean for WebP? Is it going into Core at all, or has it been blocked?
- @jeffpaul: It’s been reverted from 6.1 and seems best suited as a Canonical Plugin, based on Matt’s comment in WebP in Core for 6.1 of “This is excellent territory for a canonical plugin”.
- What does this mean for other in-development features for Core?
- @jeffpaul: Can you provide an example as I imagine it could depend based on what you’re referencing?@costdev: Some examples would be Rollback, Plugin Dependencies, WP Notify
- @afragen: Question – Is Matt or leadership going to let us know whether existing feature projects are going to be acceptable for core or live their life as canonical plugins?
- @jeffpaul: yeah that’s where I was headed… I think if we as core contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. can collect a list of those outstanding proposals, then we could look to Core Team Reps to route those through Josepha/Matt for input as to whether they’re still ok to continue towards core merge proposal or better suited as a canonical plugin.
- Do we have a criteria for what is acceptable for Core, and what should be a Canonical plugin? Or are all features Canonical Plugins unless they’re a “runaway success” as Matt said in the post?
- @jeffpaul: This is all still a new process for many of us I imagine, but if I had to guess I suspect we might want to update our core proposal “process” to ensure there’s a check early on with Matt/Josepha for direction on “this is good for core merge proposal” or “this is best as a canonical plugin” so we know early on how best to be building out the feature.
- @jeffpaul: answering these on my own behalf with no input from Matt, Josepha, lead devs, committers, or anyone else of significance here in core.
- @costdev said it might be useful to have the issue discussed with Core during a dev chat open floor to give a little heads up, understand the reasoning of the decision, and a Q&A prior to the public announcement.
- @jeffpaul: I suspect it may be more likely that we get answers from Matt async than waiting for a week where his schedule is free for dev chat (and one where others can be present to participate). As such, it may be better to gather questions folks have, again maybe via coordination with Core Team Reps, and present those to Matt/Josepha to get responses async to help guide our actions here as core contributors.
c) WordPress GitHub 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/
If you are a member of the WordPress GitHub organization, you should have received a message to enable Two Factor Authentication if it is currently disabled on your account. Please check your messages and settings.
The next dev chat will be on Wednesday September 28, 2022 at 20:00 UTC.
Props to @webcommsat for the summary, @costdev and @marybaum for the review.
#6-1, #core, #dev-chat, #summary
