Summary, Dev Chat, March 20, 2024

Start of the meeting in 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/., facilitated by @joemcgill.

Announcements

WordPress 6.5 RC 3 was released on March 19, 2024, and Gutenberg 17.9 was released on March 13. Please continue to help test and provide feedback.

Forthcoming Releases

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.: 6.5

We are in the final week before WordPress 6.5 is scheduled to be released, with a Dry Run scheduled for next Monday, March 25, and the release scheduled for Tuesday, March 26.

@swissspidy and @sergeybiryukov will both be around to help during the Dry Run.

Please continue to test the 6.5 release. See this list of key features to test, which was published alongside WP 6.5 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. 3.

Next 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/ release: 18.0

Gutenberg 18.0 is scheduled for release on March 27 and will include these issues.

Discussion

Given that this was the last dev chat before the 6.5 release, we concentrated on discussing any final decisions, blockers, etc.

@swissspidy suggested starting with the Font Library:

From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that adding such a fallback logic appears to be more complex than originally anticipated and that it’s not feasible to land this in time for 6.5. Adding a silent fourth 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). solely for that would be too risky.
So for 6.5 we might want to consider:
1. Leave the current situation as-is (fonts go to `wp-content/fonts`, no fallback)
2. Point people to plugins such as Fonts to Uploads and the dev-note explaining how to change the upload location.
3. Re-evaluate fallback logic for 6.5.1 or 6.6 if needed, also considering potential folders in the future (patterns, templates, AI models, etc.)

We discussed how the fallback logic is proving to be more complicated than expected and will present a future maintenance burden and potential for bugs that aren’t worth the risk of rushing to land a fix. We mentioned alternative options, including delaying the release and removing the Font Library.

The suggestion from release leads and people familiar with the latest state of the Font Library was that it is in a good enough shape to include, and that the difficulty is in the implementation of the potential automatic fallback and not in implementing the feature itself. Therefore, the plan following the conversation was that the feature will be shipped without the fallback logic in place.

Based on this, the following actions should be taken:

1. A post on make/coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to communicate the decision — @peterwilsoncc offered to start on a draft
2. Update the docs with a pointer to 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 — @flexseth offered to help update docs (@mikachan also happy to help here)
3. Update https://wordpress.org/plugins/fonts-to-uploads/ to a Canonical plugin with maintenance by WP Contributors/WP.org with source moved under the WP org on GitHubGitHub 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/ so that it’s a shared responsibility
4. Once the post outlining the decision to change to the the fallback directory behavior is posted, we should inform #forums, along with a request from them to be on the lookout for issues with the lack of a default Font Library fallback — @jorbin offered to help with this

Also related to the Font Library, @grantmkin noted that there is a wordpress-importer PR that needs review if someone has expertise and availability.

Props to @joemcgill for reviewing.

#6-5, #dev-chat, #summary