Dev Chat summary, January 25, 2023

Start of the weekly WordPress developers chat in the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. channel of the Make WordPress 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/..

The Agenda followed.

Meeting led by Francesca Marano.

Announcements

  • none

Highlighted posts

a) A Week in Core – January 23, 2023

b) Components
@francina recommend reading about every component to stay up to date with the development of the current WP release (6.2).

c) 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/
What’s New in Gutenberg 15.0

– One more Guterberg release is planned to go that will be merged in WordPress 6.2. The 15.1 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). (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).) 1 is planned for February 1, 2023. 

 d) Old tickets
As part of the 20 year celebration of WordPress, there is a proposal for a triage sessions dedicated to old tickets
A first/kickoff session will be on January 26, 2023 at 16:00 UTC.
– The sessions will start with a selection of very old tickets, but if people have suggestions for tickets that are over 10 years old, it would be appreciated.
Actions:
– requests or comments can be added to the post
– attend one of the sessions

– The primary goal is not to resolve tickets directly, but to add the right workflow keywords, to close tickets that are no longer relevant, and if possible to find an interested person to take ownership on each ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker., to refresh the 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., etc.

A discussion followed on opening the 6.3 milestone, in order to be able to move tickets that we know cannot be milestoned to WP 6.2, instead of moving them to Future Release. Others recommended against punting everything to 6.3 as that shifts burden to the 6.3 team to assess what’s needed on as they’re starting their release cycle. Suggested instead, making an informed decision of “is it somewhat certain this will be ready for 6.3”, and if not then move to Future Release.

Releases

Next major: 6.2

Development cycle page 

WordPress 6.2 Planning Roundup including the schedule and the squad 

Bug Scrub Schedule

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 of WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for February 7, 2023

Update from @francina: There won’t be a go/no-go demo or a walkthrough this time. @marybaum said walkthrough will be after Beta 1, date not confirmed as yet.

You can read updates from all release leads in the #6-2-release-leads channel, starting at this timestamp.

@francina: discussion on some confusion around the Feature Freeze milestone which was never formally documented and lasted only for a couple of release. Recap from @jeffpaul: Beta 1 = end of enhancements/features; some things that are labeled that way in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. may get converted to bugs/tasks because what remains are small things post-commit of the large actual feature/enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. code.

Bug fixes can still be merged in Beta and so do task (blessed).

Component Maintainers / tickets help

Updates from components maintainers section of the agenda from @francina:
– Discussion in the Release Leads channel 
– This section of the chat usually sees the maintainers attending giving status updates, which are covered in “Week in Core”. The agenda also lists help for tickets.
– Move to “request for help/blockers”? In the past, there were discussions around having a weekly post on the blogblog (versus network, site) for Maintainers. The discussion in dev chat can be read at this Slack message. The discussion included the value of a user group for maintainers, the notification link to maintainers group on Slack needs updating via a MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket, annual review / check-in with maintainers. Other comments from those not able to be at dev chat are welcomed.

@sergeybiryukov on General components: Work has continued on renaming parameters that use reserved PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher keywords. Ticket #56788 for more details.

“For transparency, these commits are a result of weekly coding sessions with the WordPress Core team at Yoast, where we focused on improving PHP 8.x compatibility. The initial PRs took me a while to review and finalize, as I wanted to strike a balance between embracing the chaos that is WordPress codebase and making these naming changes at least somewhat consistent. This did not seem like a huge task initially, but still spanned over a few releases.

“For our next focus, we’re thinking of resolving some WPCSWordPress Community Support A public benefit corporation and a subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation, established in 2016. issues in core (remaining non-strict comparisons, etc.) and adding missing @covers annotations in unit tests (there is a huge existing PR that has been open for a long time and needs a refresh and review).”
Action: If you can think of any other code maintenance tasks that would improve developer experience, please feel free to suggest.
A few areas where contributors can help with:
– the missing @covers annotations in unit tests is a big issue. Refreshing the PR on #56782 would be a good first step 

@audrasjb‘s request relating to 6.2: for someone working on Gravatars to ask them a few question about the background of the current implementation in WordPress. The ticket itself is already handled (#57493), more info is requested as the GravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/. documentation doesn’t include any history. More details from this Slack timestamp.

@webcommsat: For About/ Help and Quick/Bulk components, we will be having a focus review on Monday January 30, 2023 at 15:00 UTC next week (earlier time) as we have some APAC contributors coming along.

@afragen: Upgrade/Install component:
There’s a great new feature for Upgrade/Install that is only waiting on some testing in VirtualBox 7. Some VB7 testing is currently being done by @costdev. This new feature should greatly speed up 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/theme updates for all users. The PR has passing unit tests. Requested: some extra reviews on PR3798 and any concerns added to the ticket
 for discussion. Requested if it is not able to be committed before beta1, is it possible to have it task (blessed) ?

@craigfrancis: request on what can be done regarding the “early” ticket #52506. It has had some checks, and request for as much testing as possible. Suggested committing so there would be more testing time in beta and RC, or alternatively wait about 18 weeks (until 6.3 early), where Craig believes it will be in the same position again. @jeffpaul suggested co-ordinating with @davidb as owner of the ticket on likelihood of committing in 6.2. @sergeybiryukov offered help for review if there is a consensus from release leads that it can be committed this week. Core tech lead invited – @audrasjb confirmed did not see any blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release.. If the owner and/or one other committercommitter A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component. are happy with the current implementation, suggested to ship it now.
[Note there is currently an ongoing discussion on definition of early]

Open Floor

i) New Contributor meetings
@jeffpaul raised a question on New Contributor meetings, which takes place two weeks before dev chat. He suggested a similar process for contributors helping run this meeting as the team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. annual process. He highlighted the existing core contributors listed as help run this meeting “have been in that role for quite some time and it may be worth seeing who else might be able to help run this meeting so some of these folks can rotate out. So I’d suggest we at least share this during dev chat and see if folks are interested in helping out (and also if any of the existing folks would like to politely rotate out as well)? I don’t think we need a formal nomination/voting process here, so much as looking for folks to commit to help with this meeting (say over the course of 3/6/9/12 months).”

@desrosj and @sergeybiryukov advised since the start of the New Contributor meetings there has always been an open door to anyone that wanted to help run the meetings. They have once or twice had someone new express interest in helping run the meetings. Confirmed more people to help are welcome. No formal process was thought to be needed.

Call: These meetings can be held at other times too – contributors who regularly show up can offer to help run meetings. Eg aimed at contributors in APAC/other non-Americas-centric timezones wanting to host as a one-off or on a regular basis.

Actions: @desrosj: A new page in the handbook was suggested on facilitating new contributor meetings.

There have been previous discussions on an earlier time which would fit both APAC and some European timezones. @marybaum @robinwpdeveloper and @webcommsat have offered to assist with facilitation and regularly attend the existing one. Discussions are ongoing on this, and a follow-up conversation with some of the existing contributors is planned.

For more on this from the meeting, Slack timestamp.

@costdev: request to become component maintainer for the Filesystem component. The plan is to first address docs inconsistencies/typos and such, then move onto writing tests. Then with this solid basis continue working on the open tickets.

Props to @webcommsat for the agenda preparation,
to @francina for facilitating the meeting,
to @webcommsat for the summary,
and @audrasjb and @marybaum for reviewing.

#dev-chat, #summary