Dev Chat Summary, September 27, 2023

The notes from the weekly WordPress developers chat which took place on September 27, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Key links

• Dev Chat agenda and highlighted posts followed for the meeting, prepared by @webcommsat
• Start of the meeting on Slack hosted by @hellofromtonya

Announcements

WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 is available – please help test and make the release the best it can be. All details are on the post. Thanks to everyone who contributed to getting this to 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 and those who came and led the release party on September 26.

Highlighted posts

The following were listed on the agenda but not highlighted during the meeting due to a discussion on 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/ and Beta 1:

• An early version of a plugin checker has been launched. The Plugins Review team volunteers application form will be open until the end of September 2023 – if you can help contribute to this area, take a look at the post and all the handbook information.

• WordPress Performance team has a new version of the Performant Translations 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 with improved compatibility and performance. It has more than 1000 installations as at September 26, 2023. More testers will be needed and @swissspidy has created a proof-of-concept core patch in the meantime.

Release updates

Next major WordPress release: 6.4

WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 is scheduled for October 3, 2023.

Discussion at Dev Chat focused on Gutenberg 16.7 and WordPress 6.4. More on this discussion will be available in a separate post on the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. channel soon. Link to start of the discussion on Slack.

@joemcgill suggested adding comments to the discussion from the WordPress Community Summit: Community Summit Discussion Notes: Aligning processes and contributions between WordPress Core and Gutenberg.

Stay in the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. with 6.4 by following:

• Release parties schedule for 6.4
• WordPress 6.4 Development Cycle
• 6.4 Editor tasks board
• Roadmap to 6.4 – this 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. is scheduled for November 7, 2023
• Bug Scrub Schedule 6.4. The scrubs take place in the core channel on 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/..
• and following along in the #6-4-release-leads channel

Next minor WordPress release: 6.3.2

Call for ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. reviews by @joemcgill 

The scrub on September 27, 2023 focused on the 6.3.2 milestone in preparation for another minor releaseMinor 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..
Five tickets in the milestone remain to be fixed in trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision..
Request/ Action: reviews are needed of these tickets to move them forward, and if they are able to get in this week. Of note, are a few that need to be synced from the Gutenberg repo. If someone has planned to help with this, please comment in the 6.3 releases leads channel on Slack.

Also six tickets that are fixed, but need to be back ported to the 6.3 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch"..
Request: if committers have some time to review and help, that would be a big help.

Discussion followed in Dev Chat and after on potential target dates for the next minor, which would allow time for work to be wrapped up on the remaining tasks. Provisional dates included October 10, earlier in the day from Beta 3. @joemcgill able to help with the 6.3.2 release and noted contributors are still need to be identified for official release roles.
Action: If you can volunteer to help with 6.3.2, comment in the 6.3 release leads channel on Slack. The date for the release is still under discussion.

Gutenberg

• Gutenberg 16.7 was released on September 27. Update: What’s new in Gutenberg 16.7 post
  @hellofromtonya advised the Font Library shipped in Gutenberg 16.7. Testing and feedback is greatly appreciated.

Help requests: Components maintainers & Tickets

No other tickets were raised in the agenda comments or after Dev Chat.

Open Floor

This item did not feature at this week’s Dev Chat due to time constraints.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be on Wednesday October 4, 2023, at 20:00 UTC.

Props to @webcommsat, @nalininonstopnewsuk, @ironprogrammer, and @hellofromtonya and @marybaum for review.

#6-4, #dev-chat, #meeting, #summary