Now that we’ve shipped WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy,” it’s time for a little planning for the other major releases this year. Volunteers are needed for the WordPress 6.3 squad (release target mid-July), especially those willing to dedicate time toward mentoring the next round of squad members. I would like to propose that WordPress 6.4 be run entirely by a women and nonbinary squad, a reprise of the historic WordPress 5.6 release, “Simone”, and training cohorts offered during 6.3 are an excellent opportunity for new contributors to prepare for the 6.4 release.
Important Note: I short-hand the release to “women and nonbinary” for easy referencing in our day-to-day collaboration, but the release squad will be open to anyone who identifies as a woman, nonbinary, or gender-expansive. All contributions are welcome as always, regardless of how you identify or what groups you feel part of. 🙂
What’s the Goal?
The primary goal of any release cycle is to ship a stable and enhanced version of the WordPress CMS that ships in scope and on time. The release date for WordPress 6.4 is tentatively slated for November, with the exact dates determined as the 6.3 timeline and the 6.4 release squad is confirmed.
Having a release squad comprised of folx we don’t typically see in technology also has a goal of increasing the number of underrepresented people who have experience maintaining, managing, and shipping software in an open source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project. All contributions to the release and release process are welcome.
What’s the Plan?
I would like to repeat the process we used leading up to WordPress 5.6, with some slight modifications. The WordPress 5.6 release squad had the opportunity to learn the 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. cycle process by acting as understudies to the folx that lead the WordPress 5.5 release. The 5.6 squad was able to progressively level up their skills by watching how the 5.5 squad worked, assisting on things while guided by 5.5 leads, and finally leading a minor release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. with assistance where needed.
- Prepare and Plan
- Gather nominations for the 6.4 team and ensure the 6.3 and 6.4 release timing works for each. Participation in 6.3 is optional, but it has been successful when others tried the process before leading the process.
- Confirm volunteers’ alignment to release squad roles.
- Identify additional volunteers for any remaining release squad roles.
- Gather mentors for each release squad group.
- Join Release 6.3
- Join meetings, triage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. sessions, etc., and ask questions in the public #6-3-release-leads channel to feel comfortable heading into the 6.4 release.
- Navigate Release 6.3.x
- Collaborate with the 6.3 release squad to navigate a point release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. and ask every question.
- Drive Release 6.4
- Drive the release while collaborating with some established women and nonbinary contributors as well as the 6.3 mentors.
How Can You Help?
If you would like to learn more about what participating in a release this way would mean (or want to volunteer right away!), please leave a comment letting me know. You can also feel free to DM me or any of these original supporters of WP5.6: @francina @jeffpaul @desrosj. We’re interested to hear from:
- Anyone who wants to be a part of the WP6.4 release process.
- Anyone who wants to be a mentor leading up to or during WP6.4
- Anyone who has questions about how this will work. 🙂
Props to the following editors and co-creators of this post: @jeffpaul @cbringmann @daisyo @ironprogrammer @bph @desrosj @priethor
#6-3, #6-4, #planning
