Summary, Dev Chat, June 19, 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 @mikachan. 🔗 Agenda post.

Announcements

  • WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 was released yesterday! Thank you to all the contributors for a successful release. Please continue to test and report any issues you find.
  • 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/ 18.6 is scheduled for release today. This release will not be included in WordPress 6.6.
  • Thank you so much to everyone who joined and contributed to the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. tables on Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at WCEU!

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 currently in the WordPress 6.6 release cycle. See the Roadmap Post for details about what is planned for this release.

Discussion

@jeffpaul raised this just-before-chat note from Josepha on the About page and Microsites that’s worth highlighting and driving folks there for input.

Hello in here, wonderful release squad! I understand that my request about the About Page vs Microsites has gotten confusing, so I’m here to answer whatever questions we have.

In a post-release retrospective a while back, I noticed that we were working on a lot of duplicate content in various places every release. I always want to make sure that we are making the most of the time we put in, so I had asked if we could write/create the content for the microsite first, and then copy/paste highlights from it to the About page in the CMS (+ link to the microsite), and the release post.

@marybaum, @ryelle, and @annezazu are working to update the Google doc to reflect the latest priorities from the microsite for final review ahead of the upcoming string freeze.

@meher raised questions in this thread about whether a 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. 4 is needed due to 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. fixes that didn’t make it into Beta 3?

@joemcgill said that there is no requirement to do an extra Beta release to test commits that happen between Beta 3 and 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). 1.

@hellofromtonya mentioned that there have also been times when an unscheduled Beta release has been done when there is a fix that needs more exposure and testing before RC 1.

After the meeting, @jorbin suggested that we codify the philosophy so we can make it easier to make these decisions in the future, and shared the following thoughts:

  1. There needs to be a large enough change (either quantity or quality) for the investment to make sense.
  2. It’s a not insignificant amount of work for each beta release. Between an announcement post, package creation, package testing and commits, it’s an investment.
  3. The investment should pay for itself in increased confidence. This confidence comes in the way of time that people can test and bug reports or bug elimination confirmations. 
  4. If possible, others investments such as a make post or a GB release may make the most sense since those can allow for increased confidence with a lower amount of required work.

Open Floor

There was no time for open floor today.

Note: Anyone reading this summary outside of the meeting, please drop a comment in the post summary, if you can/want to help with something.

Props to @mikachan for proofreading.

#6-6, #core, #dev-chat, #summary