Agenda, Dev Chat, Jan 29, 2025

Beginning this week, Dev Chat times for the 6.8 cycle are changing. The next WordPress Developers Chat will take place on Wednesday at 15:00 UTC in the core channel on Make WordPress Slack.

The live meeting will focus on the discussion for upcoming releases, and have an open floor section.

Additional items will be referred to in the various curated agenda sections below. If you have ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. requests for help, please continue to post details in the comments section at the end of this agenda.

Announcements

The Nominations for 2025’s Core Team Reps are closing this week. Please nominate people in the comments of that post. Self-nominations are welcome. The deadline is January 31, 2025.

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.: 6.8

We are currently in the WordPress 6.8 release cycle. Read more about the release squad, timeline and focus for this release.

Next maintenance release: 6.7.2

WordPress 6.7.2 is scheduled for February 11, with a 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). planned on February 4.

Review the next minor release milestone.

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: 20.2

The next Gutenberg release will be 20.2, tentatively scheduled for February 5. It will include the following issues.

Discussions

The discussion section of the agenda is to provide a place to discuss important topics affecting the upcoming release or larger initiatives that impact the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Team. To nominate a topic for discussion, please leave a comment on this agenda with a summary of the topic, any relevant links that will help people get context for the discussion, and what kind of feedback you are looking for from others participating in the discussion.

Topics this week

  • Syncing GB packages to 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.: Let’s discuss next steps and potential blockers @mamaduka and @desrosj
  • CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. variables for colors: @karmatosed is looking for feedback on what approach should be taken for variables for colors in CSS. Related tickets: #49930, #62872
  • REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/.: Support for sorting by hierarchy: @mamaduka identified this PR that could use more eyes.
  • Speculative Loading: @flixos90 is looking for additional feedback on #62503 before merging for 6.8
  • Core Performance Team Reps: The Core Performance team is looking for new Team Reps

Editor Updates

You can keep up to date with the major Editor features that are currently in progress by viewing these Iteration issues.

  • Document outline does not detect headings in the content when template-lock is used – Document outline 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.. Need to hear more options on this
  • Accessibility: Menu: reconsider the modal behavior – Need to discuss in next accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) meeting
  • Non Administrator roles are no longer able to switch post templates (and therefore also cannot preview them) – This is a regressionregression 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. issue
  • Font size picker: Fix i10n and a11y for HeaderLabel – Accessibility, UIUI User interface components. This PR refactors the font-size-picker component to improve the translationtranslation The process (or result) of changing text, words, and display formatting to support another language. Also see localization, internationalization. in the HeaderLabel. It ensures that text concatenation issues are resolved for gendered languages (e.g., Italian).
  • Block Editor: Fix ‘isBlockVisibleInTheInserter’ selector helper performance – Fixes recent performance regression in the BlockBlock 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. Editor package. – Block Editor, Performance
  • Add format attribute to the palette’s color property – Enhances the JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. schema for WordPress theme.json to enable color swatches and the color picker functionality for hex values within JSON in VS Code.
  • Update paragraph block placeholder text format for consistency – Paragraph enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. – Updates placeholder text in paragraph blocks to use ‘ / ‘ for the forward slash key.

Thanks to @krupaly2k for pulling together these updates.

Open floor

Any topic can be raised for discussion in the comments, as well as requests for assistance on tickets. Tickets in the milestone for the next major or maintenance release will be prioritized.

Please include details of tickets / PRs and the links in the comments, and if you intend to be available during the meeting for discussion or if you will be async.

#6-8, #agenda, #dev-chat