Dev Chat Summary, May 24, 2023

The WordPress Developers Chat meeting took place on May 24, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Key Links

Announcements

  • WordPress 6.2.2 Security Release: This rapid-response security release addresses a shortcodes regressionregression A software bug that breaks or degrades something that previously worked. Regressions are often treated as critical bugs or blockers. Recent regressions may be given higher priorities. A "3.6 regression" would be a bug in 3.6 that worked as intended in 3.5. from 6.2.1, and further improves security around this feature.
  • What’s new in Gutenberg 15.8: Get the latest scoop on what’s recently shipped in 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/. Posted by @fabiankaegy 🎉
  • …which means that Gutenberg 15.8 is available for download.

Highlighted Posts

Here’s an overview of updates in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. between May 8 and May 22, 2023 — yep, that’s “Two Weeks in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.”:

  • 48 commits
  • 87 contributors
  • 108 tickets created
  • 10 tickets reopened
  • 79 tickets closed
  • 🥁 and 5 new contributors in this period 🎉
  • WP Briefing: Episode 56: What to Know About WordPress Playground: Learn more about experiments surrounding the ever-growing WordPress Playground, and what coding and testing accessibilityAccessibility 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) opportunities this exciting project is making possible.
  • Core Editor Improvement: Smoother Site Editing: See some of the latest updates to the editor, including revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. history for styles, templates, and template parts.

Release Updates

  • WordPress 6.3 Planning Roundup: Please take a moment to review the latest plans for the 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.. And give a round of applause to the new release squad! (You can find them and follow along over in #6-3-release-leads, too!)
  • @audrasjb indicated that the full 6.3 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 schedule was almost ready to publish. The schedule includes at least 2 scrubs per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and alternatively at 05:00, 06:00, 14:00, and 17:00 UTC. Everyone is welcome to join the first scrub on 25 May at 14:00 UTC.
  • @karmatosed wished to bring awareness to a proposal to include #design triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. as part of 6.3 #core and #core-editor triages, rather than as separate design-only meetings. The objective is to draw greater designer focus to these release-specific meetings, and encourage better collaboration and alignment between teams. It is planned to record some of these sessions as learning resources. Tammie asked for feedback on this idea and how the Design team can be helpful in the release, with the first meeting plan soon to be posted on make/design. She also called on other contributors to highlight tickets that needed Design team input, so that they could be amplified in #design.
  • @francina also gave a reminder that the #6-3-release-leads channel was a good place to follow along with release coordination efforts, in particular encouraging contributors with interest in helping on the 6.4 release to join the channel and ask questions.

Maintainers: Component Help Requests

@afragen called for additional help in testing the 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 Dependencies feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins., and requested Design team feedback. @karmatosed proposed some options for helping move designer involvement forward.

@oglekler highlighted #11856: URL for 1st comments page is not canonical, indicating it would need a careful approach to resolution.

Open Floor

WP Adminadmin (and super admin) Help Panel

@studionashvegas shared #55342: If the contextual help panel is open and then I scroll, I have to click on help twice to close the panel, asking for review of 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., which addresses a visual bug in WP admin. @audrasjb assigned the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. to the 6.3 milestone, and marked for needs-testing.

Special Focus Triage Sessions

@oglekler asked if there were plans for additional “old ticket” triage sessions, and @karmatosed suggested that holding even one session per release would be a good beginning.

@oglekler also wondered if all tickets marked as critical could be triaged, with the belief that many may be mis-classified. She suggested that the critical severityseverity The seriousness of the ticket in the eyes of the reporter. Generally, severity is a judgment of how bad a bug is, while priority is its relationship to other bugs. is most useful when applied correctly. @ironprogrammer asked if reviewing these tickets was part of release scrubs, and @audrasjb indicated that scheduling dedicated scrubs for these tickets would be best, but that it was ultimately up to release Triage co-leads to decide.

@ironprogrammer then asked for volunteers to help facilitate these scrubs, suggesting there could be other interested contributors, and included a link to the Core Handbook’s bug scrub tutorial. @davidbaumwald added a reminder that scrubs could happen any time by anyone. He also indicated agreement that existing critical tickets were mostly normal severity, and could be cleaned up quickly without requiring a meeting. Contributors can request “Bug Gardener” Trac access in the #core channel if they wish to conduct triage.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on May 31, 2023 at 20:00 UTC.

Are you interested in helping draft Dev Chat summaries? Volunteer at the start of the next meeting on the #core Slack channel.

Props @audrasjb and @pbiron for peer review of this summary.

#6-3, #6-2-2, #dev-chat, #meeting, #summary