Summary, Dev Chat, April 10, 2024

Announcements

WordPress 6.5.2 Maintenance and Security Release was released on Tuesday, April 9. WordPress version 6.5.1 could not be released due to a packaging error.

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.: 6.6

We are officially in the WordPress 6.6 release cycle.

@priethor published this WordPress 6.6 Planning Proposal & Call for Volunteers post recently, and is currently collecting the names of squad and cohort volunteers to share with leadership.

@jeffpaul commented that “at least finalizing the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. & Editor tech leads and an 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). would go a long way towards formally kicking off.”

@jorbin said, “I’ve also seen a couple questions about default themes and getting that kicked off during this release, I think getting an answer there would be helpful”

@joemcgill asked, “…what the focuses of this release would be. @chanthaboune originally proposed that 6.6 be held as a maintenance and polish release in this post, but I’m unsure if that’s still the plan.” And later, “To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating for 6.6 to be mainly a polish release, I just see the need to be intentional in release planning if we want to actually execute that objective.”

Next maintenance release: 6.5.3

There are currently 13 open tickets in the 6.5.3 release milestone.

Later in the meeting @jorbin shared an initial proposed schedule for 6.5.3.

The first 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. for 6.5 is out, though it was a quick turnaround security release. For a proper minor release, I would like to gather thoughts on the following plan:

1. @grantmkin has volunteered to help on the editor side (Thank you!)
2. I would like to suggest a target of 7 May for 6.5.3 with an RC on 2 May. This will allow for about 4 weeks to identify and fix any bugs. I think Tuesday’s have served us fairly well.
3. To assist in this, I would like to start 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. scrubs. I’m thinking twice weekly with one focused on tracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. and one 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/ until we get closer to the release with the last few looking at both bug trackers

Slack reference

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: 18.2

Gutenberg 18.1 was released on April 10 and included these issues. 18.2 is scheduled for April 24 and will include these issues.

Discussion

During discussion we checked in on the progress that the 6.5 release coordinators are making on organizing a release retro post (see this thread). @marybaum confirmed that @priethor, @marybaum, and @akshayar are working on this and will update the #6-5-release-leads channel soon.

It was confirmed that retros have been a part of our release process for several previous releases. Many of them can be found by lookin at the retrospective tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) on this site.

Highlighted posts

The full list of posts from the last week in Core can be read on the agenda at this link.

Open floor

Tony Gravagno proposed that retrospectives could be used for marketing. “People need an occasional reminder and reinforcement that their platform of choice is aggressively maintained, despite occasional press about 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 vulnerabilities … which is all most people see about WP.” He then suggested that this might be better discussed in the #marketing channel.

Damon Cook shared that he has recently added details to the Project Updates and Details area in key Gutenberg GitHub Project boards (example: WordPress 6.6 Editor Tasks). Damon is planning on trying to keep those up to date throughout the cycle.

This prompted @jeffpaul to ask whether these updates could be provided on make/core to capture a broader audience.

“My lens is for someone who’s not in lots of GitHub issues, PRs, or boards and finds it hard to stay current on what’s transpiring there and thus not as able to contribute without that context.  Trying to find ways to bring some of that scattered context back to make/core for broader consumption and contextual understanding.”

Damon was open to experimenting on how to best cross-share info in both places. “…for now, I just wanted to make folks aware that I’ve started utilizing the feature and can even deactivate or remove it if it is confusing.”

The full conversation about these status updates starts here.

@dmsnell wanted to remind folks about his proposal to remove support for HTML4 and XHTML. “Doing this is mostly ceremonial, since those formats aren’t supported in reality. Removing them officially though gives us liberty to modernize existing code and improve WordPress’ HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers.-handling reliability. More info in the linked ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.: #59883“.