The notes from the weekly WordPress developers chat which took place on October 25, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.
Key Links
Announcements
WordPress 6.4 Release Candidate 2 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 towards this.
Summary and Insights of Phase 3 related conversations
WordPress 6.4 Release Candidate Phase
WordPress 6.4 Field Guide
Highlighted Posts
Summary and Insights of Phase 3 related conversations
WordPress 6.4 Release Candidate Phase
WordPress 6.4 Field Guide
Release Updates
Next major WordPress release: 6.4
New 6.4 related posts
6.4 Release Candidates phase
Update from contributors on docs for this release:
- Field Guide for 6.4
- You can also find all Developer Notes relating to 6.4 using this tag
- If you think a ticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. needs a dev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. and it has not been highlighted previously, send a message to Nalini on 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/. for those working on the docs release or add it to the Documentation Tracker for 6.4
- Call for contributors to assist with 6.4 End User documentation
Any issues relating to 6.4 tickets?
Existing 6.4 useful links
Release parties schedule for 6.4
This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.4.
Roadmap to 6.4 – this release is scheduled for November 7, 2023.
Bug Scrub Schedule 6.4
6.4 Development Cycle
Project Board for Editor Tasks for WordPress 6.4 on 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/
Gutenberg 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 16.9? (25 October) – Other than the new release update, nothing related to Gutenberg was brought up in the meeting.
Components & Tickets
The following tickets were raised in the meeting for feedback:
Trac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticket #59718: Short-term (WP 6.4) hotfix to prevent fatal error in standalone Gutenberg (<16.5)
Trac ticket #59289: About Page for 6.4 Release
Trac ticket #59722: Regression 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.: class-wp-rest-server.php
For the above tickets check out the Slack discussion for more information.
Trac ticket #59723: Pattern file containing PHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher constant from theme causes fatal error on update to WordPress 6.4 – was brought up by @hellofromtonya since this issue is in 6.3 and 6.4 and causes a fatal error during the upgrade process. Check out the Slack discussion for more info.
More tickets were brought up by @hellofromtonya as they need attention:
Trac ticket #59736: Regression: Singular 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. template – regression introduced in 6.4 by r56507. Has a patch 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. on it and explanation.
Trac ticket #59723: Pattern file containing PHP constant from theme causes fatal error on update to WordPress 6.4 – fatal error during WP upgrade
Trac ticket #55493: [Block] File: Embedded PDF fails to render in Safari – regression in File block introduced in 6.4
Trac ticket #59732: Theme live preview is broken – Customizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. theme live previewers are broken, which 6.4 didn’t cause but help to emphasis it. There’s a patch that’s ready to test. Need to better understand its impact in 6.4.
Trac ticket #58281: Rollback Auto-Update (Rollback part 3) – check out the Slack discussion for more info as it was raised by @afragen
Open floor
@jeffpaul highlighted for post 6.4, the Community Summit Discussion Notes: Aligning processes and contributions between WordPress Core and Gutenberg. He especially drew attention to this topic to those who are active during the 6.4 release and particularly with the Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Gutenberg interactions. He asked for them to share their insights and thoughts on the post to help improve planning, shared processes and to make things easier for the future.
@joemcgill raised a query on the planning and squads formation for the future 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., 6.5, and the 6.4.1, 6.4.2 etc minor releases. The Slack discussion.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Wednesday November 1, 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 to @webcomms and @marybaum for input into the summary and for review.
#6-4, #6-5-2, #dev-chat, #meeting, #summary
