Tag Archives: 6-4

Abha Thakor 8:55 pm on November 21, 2023
Tags: 6-4, , ,   

Dev Chat agenda, November 22, 2023

The next weekly WordPress developers chat will take place on Wednesday, November 22, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Welcome and housekeeping

All are welcome to join Dev Chat.

Dev Chat summary from November 15, 2023 – thanks @ironprogrammer and @webcommsat

If you can help with dev chat summaries, please raise your hand in the meeting.

Announcements

What’s new in Gutenberg 17.1

Highlighted posts

Exploration to support Modules and Import Maps – this post shares the collaborative effort to explore native support for modern JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. modules and import maps within the WordPress ecosystem to enhance the developer experience. Details of how you can get involved with this initiative are in the post.

Please add any additional highlighted posts in comments.

Introduction

Update from coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-editor (New section in the agenda)

Initially items relating to this will be posted as comments on the agenda by @annezazu and others.

Please also add your thoughts to the discussion on the future of the core-editor chat.

Forthcoming release updates

WordPress release: 6.4 – any new issues?

Any new updates on 6.4.x release team or dates for 6.4.2?

Next major WordPress release: 6.5

Update opportunity.

Development cycle page.

Are you able to help with future 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? Bug scrubs post.

Tickets or Components help requests

Please add any items for this part of the agenda to the comments – tickets for 6.5 will be prioritized. If you can not attend dev chat live, don’t worry, include a note and the facilitator can highlight a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. if needed.

Open floor

If you have any additional items to add to the agenda, please respond in the comments below to help the facilitator highlight them during the meeting.

a) Josepha has asked in the Team Reps channel for highlights from the last year, if you have any item you feel should be included about core’s achievements or items in progress, please add them to the comments on this post for @webcommsat and @hellofromtonya who are preparing the bullet points to send for core.

b) Nominations for Core Team Reps: 2024 edition – reshare of the draft post to gather suggestions on timings related to the end date for nominations and the end of the voting period. The voting tool to use and whether an embedded voting 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. in discussion with other teams would be available for this edition to be finalized. Please do consider whether you could stand for the core team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. for next year.

#6-4, #6-5, #agenda, #dev-chat

Brian Alexander 10:18 am on November 17, 2023
Tags: 6-4, , , ,   

Dev Chat Summary, November 15, 2023

The WordPress Developers Chat meeting took place on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in core on Make WordPress Slack (or #core in Matrix).

Key info

Announcements

🎉 WordPress 6.4.1 is out!: Thank you to every single person who has been involved and continues to contribute to 6.4! (Also see the original release post.)

Additional background information on the release:

Highlighted Posts

@webcommsat emphasized that developers with 6.4 knowledge can really help with reviews and contributions toward End User docs. The sooner the documentation is published, the sooner it can benefit the community.

And some items from last week’s cancelled chat to touch on:

@jeffpaul called on potential 6.5/6.6/6.7 leads to share their thoughts on this post.

  • Accessibility improvements in the 6.4 release: Check out this rundown of a11yAccessibility 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) items addressed in 6.4.
  • Proposal to discontinue the weekly #core-editor meetings: Add your thoughts about this change, and opportunities to incorporate editor discussions in Dev Chat.
  • Shareable performance testing utils: Join the discussion to explore ways that projects can incorporate performance testing as part of their development workflow.

And finally, some reminders ⏲️:

  • Call for 6.4.x Release Managers: Work on improving 6.4 continues after the main release, so please consider joining the 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. squad to help keep 6.4 healthy.
  • Call for volunteers to help with 6.4 end-user documentation: The Docs team is looking for volunteers to revise end-user docs (HelpHub) for 6.4. Check out the post and learn how to pitch in! Wait…did I mention this already? Yep — but it’s so important for our user community ❤️.

Release Updates

Next minor release: 6.4.2

@jeffpaul noted that if minor release squad volunteers can be found soon, that there’s a possibility of shipping a 6.4.2 minor release before year’s end. He requested feedback on whether there are any urgent/important items that need to be addressed soon.

@jorbin has been watching the (6.4) minor release issues report, and noted that #59847 seems the most urgent. He also pointed out nice-to-have editor package backports in #59828. If volunteers can be found to support the release, then he suggested a target of the week of November 27, 2023.

@joemcgill noted that #59847 is nearly ready, and requested feedback on the related PR.

👉🏻 Volunteers who can help with the 6.4.2 minor release (and determine timing) should drop a note in #6-4-release-leads.

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

  • The development cycle page has been created. It will be populated after discussing release timings and the finalization of the squad.
  • Are you able to help with future 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? Check out the 6.5 scrub schedule.
  • And keep tabs on the #6-5-release-leads channel for additional updates.

@jorbin asked that 6.5 ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. scrub participants keep an eye out for regressions that should be moved to the 6.4.2 milestone, to get fixes delivered to users more quickly.

@webcommsat shared a link to the November 14 scrub for anyone looking at tickets async, and called on contributors to help with patches and writing of tests. 🙏🏻

Open Floor

Proposal to Cancel #core-editor Meetings

(This discussion started during highlights with regards to this proposal, and is shared here for readability.)

@jeffpaul expressed worry about losing touch with 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/ development without regular meetings and sought alternative ways to stay updated. @jorbin suggested incorporating editor updates into existing meetings, particularly emphasizing involvement from major release editor leads.

@webcommsat highlighted the usefulness of core-editor summaries and proposed integrating regular updates into the dev chat agenda. @ironprogrammer raised the question of where the editor summary would originate if the meetings themselves were cancelled. @jeffpaul suggested obtaining editor updates during dev chat to ensure communication of updates and blockers across the project.

The idea of carving out an official “editor updates” section in dev chat was considered, and @jorbin suggested seeking volunteers from the #core-editor channel to participate in the chat. @annezazu volunteered to take on the responsibility and discussed potential ways to share editor updates, including during the meeting or through agenda posts. The need for asynchronous options, given different time zones, was acknowledged.

@webcommsat suggested having a dedicated section for editor updates on the dev chat agenda post, and plan for asynchronous sharing. @annezazu volunteered to make the meetings and incorporate asynchronous sharing, considering her near term availability across time zones. The importance of avoiding disruptions during meetings was discussed, as was the possibility of maintaining #core-editor office hours for specific questions related to the editor.

2024 Core Team Reps Nominations

@webcommsat gave a reminder for #core contributors to have a look at the draft post: Nominations for Core Team Reps: 2024 Edition. The dates/timing may need revising, and team reps are looking into the possibility of having the voting poll embedded into the post to make it easier to vote. Please share your feedback in #core and CC @webcommsat and @hellofromtonya.

WordPress 6.4 Retrospective

@cbringmann shared WordPress 6.4 Retrospective, and asked that anyone who has contributed to the release to reflect and share their thoughts on the release process (instructions in the post). A follow-up post will be published in December.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on 22 November 2023 at 20:00 UTC .

Are you interested in helping draft Dev Chat summaries? Volunteer at the next meeting!

Props @webcommsat for collaboration on this post and meeting preparation.

#6-4, #6-5, #dev-chat, #meeting, #summary

Chloe Bringmann 8:57 pm on November 15, 2023
Tags: 6-4,   

WordPress 6.4 Retrospective

Congratulations to all who helped make WordPress 6.4 available! Now that it has been successfully released, I invite all who contributed to reflect and share our thoughts on the release process to learn, iterate, and improve for future releases. 

Anyone is welcome to participate in this retrospective, so please take a few moments to complete the form or leave public feedback in the comments below. The survey is not anonymous, allowing for outreach should further clarification be needed; please note that your email address will not be shared or used for any other purpose.

The form and comments will be open until November 30th, 2023, with anonymized results available in a follow-up post in December 2023.

Again, thank you for your contributions to 6.4 “Shirley,” and for taking the time to help make future releases even better!

Props to @priethor and @chanthaboune for the peer review

#6-4 #retrospective

Abha Thakor 3:59 pm on November 14, 2023
Tags: 6-4, , ,   

Dev Chat agenda, November 15, 2023

The next weekly WordPress developers chat will take place on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Welcome and housekeeping

All are welcome to join Dev Chat.

If you can help with dev chat summaries, please raise your hand in the meeting.

Announcements

WordPress 6.4.1 became available on November 8, 2023.

For background information:

Highlighted posts

What’s new in Gutenberg 17.0

WordPress 6.4 performance improvements (this will be added to the Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page.). @swissspidy has also published his own post on how to get started with WordPress performance https://pascalbirchler.com/wordpress-performance-testing/

An update to the Field Guide with a new dev notedev 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.: Main query loop handling for block themes in 6.4.

Post on an update to the core commit message format. It has been updated to take into account backportbackport A port is when code from one branch (or trunk) is merged into another branch or trunk. Some changes in WordPress point releases are the result of backporting code from trunk to the release branch. and follow up commits. There is also a change on where ‘props’ is used in the commit message.

Call for what is currently needed with 6.4 End User documentation (HelpHub)
– Documentation tracker on GitHub for 6.4 end users.

Reminder from last week’s schedule dev chat: (not all these may be featured in the dev chat on November 15 depending on time available).

Forthcoming release updates

WordPress release: 6.4 – any issues

Reference information:
– Field Guide for 6.4
– All Developer Notes relating to 6.4 can be found using this tag.

Next major WordPress release: 6.5

The development cycle page has been created. It will be populated post the discussion on release timings and the finalization of the squad.

Are you able to help with future 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? The next bug scrubs post.

Bug scrub on November 14, 2023. The list of tickets in milestone by the scrub. Start of the scrub for those looking at tickets async.

Tickets or Components help requests

Please add any items for this part of the agenda to the comments – tickets for 6.5 will be prioritized. If you can not attend dev chat live, don’t worry, include a note and the facilitator can highlight a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. if needed.

Open floor

If you have any additional items to add to the agenda, please respond in the comments below to help the facilitator highlight them during the meeting.

This was due to be shared at last week’s dev chat. Bringing it again to November 15, 2023:
Nominations for Core Team Reps: 2024 edition – @webcommsat to reshare the draft post and timings. To continue exploring and with metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. to embed a voting 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. within the post to make it easier for voting. Thanks to @ironprogrammer on testing and helping move this option forward, which may also assist other teams in the future.

#6-4, #6-5, #agenda, #dev-chat

Emily Clarke 8:40 pm on November 13, 2023
Tags: 6-4, , ,   

WordPress 6.4 Performance Improvements

WordPress 6.4 is the third 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. of the year that delivers a better user experience to site visitors by improving performance of the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. software. This version improves server response time by ~4% over version 6.3.2. This, combined with additional frontend optimizations, leads to improvements to Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)—an important Core Web Vital. For example, Twenty Twenty-One (a classic theme) shows an improvement of ~4% for LCP and Twenty Twenty-Three (a 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. theme) shows a ~9% LCP improvement when run on WordPress 6.4 compared with 6.3.2 based on benchmarks conducted by the WordPress Performance team.

This release caps off an ambitious year of work for the Performance Team, with major improvements made in each release. You can read more about those improvements in the performance improvement summary posts for version 6.2 and version 6.3. While version 6.2 focused on server side improvements, and 6.3 focused more on client side improvements, this release was focused on continuing server side improvements while further optimizing and extending the improvements that were made earlier in the year. Meanwhile, the team continued iterating on the tools and methodologies used to measure and report on performance.

Performance highlights for this release

An overview of the performance enhancements in this release is included in the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide and you can read details about the following highlights in their individual dev-note posts:

Server side improvements

Client side improvements


Evolving our benchmarking methodology

Previous performance benchmarks reported for each release were taken by @flixos90 (the performance release leadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release.) on his own computer, using a standardized set of best practices and tools. This release we have attempted to automate the process in order to establish a reproducible methodology that can be used by any contributor using a standard set of tools. 

The process for this release uses the compare-wp-performance 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/ action, originally developed by @swissspidy, which sets up two standard test sites using wp-env inside of a GitHub worker, takes a set of metrics based on 100 requests, and reports them in the action summary (example). To account for variance between each run, this is done 5 times and the median values are used for reporting purposes.

Revisiting previous releases

Since the testing environment has an important impact on performance benchmarks, we wanted to revisit the previous versions from this year and apply the same methodology for comparison. Each of the following metrics show the percentage the metric either improved (negative numbers) or got worse (positive numbers) between versions.

WordPress 6.2.3 vs 6.1.4

Twenty Twenty-One 

  • LCP: +2.87%
  • Server Timing -4.21%

Twenty Twenty-Three

  • LCP: -4.72%
  • Server Timing -18.15%

WordPress 6.3.2 vs 6.2.3

Twenty Twenty-One 

  • LCP: -10.82%
  • Server Timing -3.34%

Twenty Twenty-Three

  • LCP: -14.23%
  • Server Timing -10.21%

WordPress 6.4.0 vs 6.3.2

Twenty Twenty-One 

  • LCP: -3.95%
  • Server Timing -4.05%

Twenty Twenty-Three

  • LCP: -9.06%
  • Server Timing -4.59%

Detailed data can be found in this spreadsheet, with links to the individual GitHub workflows.

Future improvements

While the methodology used for this release is an improvement over the previous process, there is much room for improvement, including finding ways to stabilize the metrics collected during benchmarks for releases and during development, improving the test content and use cases we test for these benchmarks, testing different configurations and environment characteristics (e.g., PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher versions, persistent object cache, etc.).

Props

Props to @joemcgill for taking the time to write this extensive and detailed post, and @flixos90 for review.

#6-4, #core, #core-performance, #performance

Felix Arntz 3:38 am on November 13, 2023
Tags: 6-4, ,   

Main query loop handling for block themes in 6.4

In WordPress 6.4, a change has been applied to how the main query loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. is being handled for 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. themes. For singular content, the output of block templates (e.g. single.html or page.html) will be automatically wrapped in the main query loop.

Classic theme background

Historically, classic themes have included a main query loop (sometimes referred to as just “the loop”) in every template where any kind of WordPress posts from the database would be displayed. For reference, this is what the loop roughly looks like in most classic themes:

if ( have_posts() ) {
	while ( have_posts() ) {
		the_post();

		// Render the post.
	}
}

While the loop is primarily intended to iterate over the posts in a list of posts (such as the blogblog (versus network, site) or a categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. archive), even for singular content (e.g. a single post or page) this loop has been historically required for various reasons. For example, the in_the_loop() function is used by many plugins to check whether a post is currently being output.

The loop in block themes

Block themes do not use PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher templates, so they do not manually output a loop like the one shared previously. Instead, blocks are responsible for handling it, typically the “Query loop” block (core/query). It automatically takes care of rendering the loop correctly.

However, the core/query block is only intended for use in archives, or any content that displays a list of posts. It would not be suitable for singular content as it wraps the posts in list markup, which would be semantically incorrect. Furthermore, while using a loop on singular content has been common knowledge for classic theme developers, end users of WordPress may not be familiar with that concept, and it can certainly be confusing when you learn about it. In other words, there is not a good reason to bother WordPress end users with having to use blocks correctly to make sure the loop is entered.

However, this means that for singular content, there is no coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. block available for handling the loop. Prior to 6.4, the loop was still being established for most cases even on singular content, but it was using a problematic workaround that forced the loop to start based on specific post blocks like “Content” and “Featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts.” being rendered (core/post-content and core/post-featured-image). This workaround was not reliable as the blocks could also be intentionally used outside of the main query loop, and therefore led to other bugs, such as, #58027.

Current solution

To address the above, two changes [56507] and [57019] were made as part of WordPress 6.4 to automatically wrap the entire block template in a main query loop under the following circumstances:

  • The current main query is for singular content (via the is_singular() function).
  • There is indeed only a single post in the main query result.
  • The current block template is part of the current theme.
    • This is almost always the case. An exception is plugins that may inject their own block templates for specific content.
  • There post is still available to render (via the have_posts() function).

This is generally considered safe because in this situation the loop only contains the single post anyway that the current block template is for. A search through the WordPress 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 directory has not found relevant blocks where this would pose a problem. However, if you are developing a custom block plugin that makes specific assumptions about the main query loop, it is recommended that you check your block’s implementation to be compatible with this change in WordPress 6.4. This may especially be relevant for custom blocks that can be used alternatively to the “Query loop” block from WordPress core.

For example, if your custom block contains a main query loop similar to the example shown before, you could update it as follows to maintain compatibility with the new behavior:

if ( is_singular() && in_the_loop() ) {
	// Render the post.
} elseif ( have_posts() ) {
	while ( have_posts() ) {
		the_post();

		// Render the post.
	}
}

Please visit #58154 and #59225 for additional context on these changes.

Props to @gziolo and @webcommsat for peer review.

#6-4, #dev-notes, #dev-notes-6-4

Josepha 9:29 pm on November 8, 2023
Tags: 6-4, 6-4-1, ,   

WordPress 6.4.1 RC1 is now available

WordPress 6.4.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is available for testing! Some ways you can help test this minor release:

  • Use the WordPress Beta Tester 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
    • As this is a minor 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). release, select the Point Release channel and the Nightlies stream. This is the latest build including the RC and potentially any subsequent commits in trunk.
  • Use WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ to test:
    wp core update https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.4.1-RC1.zip
  • Directly download the Beta/RC version.

What’s in this release candidate?

6.4.1 RC1 features three (3) fixes.

The following tickets are fixed:

What’s next?

The final release is expected later today Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 18:00 UTC-6 (tomorrow Nov 9 @ 00:00 UTC). Please note that this timing may change pending issues reported after RC1 is released. Coordination will happen in the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ 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/. using the #core channel.

A special thanks to everyone who helped test, raised issues, and helped to fix tickets. With this release candidate, testing continues, so please help test!

The WordPress 6.4.1 release is led by @jorbin coordinating @hellofromtonya @afragen @clorith @desrosj @pbiron @schlessera @azaozz @tomsommer @nexflaszlo @howdy_mcgee @baxbridge @earnjam @timothyblynjacobs @johnbillion @flixos90 @joedolson @jeffpaul @zunaid321 @courane01 @audrasjb @tacoverdo @ironprogrammer @webcommsat @otto42 @barry and @chanthaboune

#6-4, #6-4-1, #minor-releases, #releases

Abha Thakor 6:11 pm on November 8, 2023
Tags: 6-4, ,   

Dev Chat agenda, November 8, 2023

The next weekly WordPress developers chat will take place on Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Welcome and housekeeping

All are welcome to join Dev Chat.

If you can help with dev chat summaries, please raise your hand in the meeting.

Announcements

WordPress 6.4 is out!
Thank you to every single person who has been involved and continues to contribute to 6.4 related items. As the work continues on post release aspects, another update on props will happen later in the week. It can also capture anyone missed or WordPress IDs to be updated.

Highlighted posts

A proposal for 2024 major release timings has been shared by @chanthaboune. This includes proposed dates for 6.5 to 6.7. Thoughts on timing, focus, or anything else relates to these releases can be added to the comments.
In addition, depending on other items, the Dev Chat facilitator can give time during the meeting for a live discussion.

Accessibility improvements in the 6.4 release

Proposal to discontinue the weekly core-editor meetings. Discussion about incorporating some of this within Dev Chat.

Discussion on shareable performance utils to help incorporating performance testing as part of their development workflow. On a related note, a blogblog (versus network, site) is coming from @swissspidy to help people get started with performance testing.

Reminders:

Call for 6.4x release managers

Help write and review 6.4 End User documentation

Forthcoming release updates

WordPress release: 6.4 – any issues

Reference information:
– Field Guide for 6.4
– All Developer Notes relating to 6.4 can be found using this tag.

Next major WordPress release: 6.5

The development cycle page has been created. It will be populated post the discussion on release timings and the finalization of the squad.

Tickets or Components help requests

Please add any items for this part of the agenda to the comments – tickets for 6.4.x and 6.5 will be prioritized. If you can not attend dev chat live, don’t worry, include a note and the facilitator can highlight a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. if needed.

Open floor

If you have any additional items to add to the agenda, please respond in the comments below to help the facilitator highlight them during the meeting.

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Team Reps: 2024 edition – @webcommsat to reshare the draft post and timings.

#6-4, #agenda, #dev-chat

Ebonie Butler 12:29 pm on November 7, 2023
Tags: 6-4, ,   

WordPress 6.4 Release Day Process

Preparation for the WordPress 6.4 release is completed. This post shares the release process, including the timeline and how you can help.

Release Timeline Overview

  • The Dry Run completed on Monday, November 6, 2023. ✅
  • The 24-hour code freeze started on Monday, November 6, 2023, at 18:00 UTC  ✅
  • The release party is planned for . 📅

Dry Run ✅

The Dry Run is a key event as a final walk-through for the final release. As noted above, this was hosted on November 6 in the #core Slack channel.

What happens usually during the dry run?

  • Bug reports are reviewed to determine if any are critical to warrant another 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). (release candidaterelease 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).).
  • Checks and any necessary updates are made in the src/wp-adminadmin (and super admin)/includes/update-core.php file.
  • Pre-release scripts are run to ensure test suites, coding standards, and other automated checks pass.

Since the results were acceptable, the release went into a 24-hour code freeze period.

24-Hour Code Freeze ✅

After the dry run and before the release party starts, a mandatory 24-hour code freeze goes into effect.

What does this mean? No source code for 6.4.0 (i.e., in the 6.4 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch".) can be changed during these 24 hours.

What happens if a critical 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. is reported during this period? The release squad will meet with committers and maintainers to determine if the issue is a blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release..

  • If yes, another RC release happens, and the release process restarts (meaning the dry run is repeated, and then the 24-hour code freeze clock restarts).
  • If not, then the bug is targeted for 6.4.1.

The Release Party 📅

The WordPress 6.4 Release Party will start on Tuesday, November 7 at 18:00 UTC in the #core Slack channel.

The release party walks through the steps in the Major Version Release process for anyone who wants to follow along.

Please note releasing a major version requires more time than releasing 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. or release candidate. There are more steps in the process. If any last-minute issues need addressing, more time will be needed.

How You Can Help

A key part of the release process is checking that the ZIP packages work on all the available server configurations. If you have some of the less commonly used servers available for testing (IIS, in particular), that would be super helpful. Servers running older versions of PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher and MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. will also need testing.

You can start this early by running the WordPress 6.4 RC4 packages, which are built using the same method as the final packages.

During the release party, options will be provided on how to help test the release package.

Tips on What to Test

In particular, testing the following types of installs and updates would be much appreciated:

  • Does a new WordPress install work correctly? This includes running through the manual install process, as well as WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ or one-click installers.
  • Test upgrading from 4.0.38, 4.9.22, 5.8.6, 5.9.5, 6.0.3, 6.1.3, 6.2.2, 6.3.0, 6.3.1, 6.3.2 and 6.4 RC3, as well as any other versions possible.
  • Remove the wp-config.php file and test a fresh install.
  • Test single site and multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site/networknetwork (versus site, blog) (both subdirectory and subdomain) installations.
  • Does it upgrade correctly? Are the files listed in $_old_files removed when you upgrade?
  • Does multisite upgrade properly?

Testing the following user flows on both desktop and mobile would be great to validate each function as expected:

  • Publish a post, including a variety of different blocks.
  • Comment on the post.
  • Install a new 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/theme, or upgrade an existing one.
  • Change the site language.
  • If you’re a plugin developer, or if there are complex plugins you depend upon, test that they’re working correctly.

For a more in-depth list of what features to test, make sure to check the Help Test WordPress 6.4 post.

Thanks to @meher, @rmartinezduque, @hellofromtonya and @akshayar for the peer review

#6-4, #core, #release-process

Meher Bala 4:38 pm on November 6, 2023
Tags: 6-4   

WordPress 6.4 Release Candidate 4

The fourth release candidaterelease 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). (RC4) for WordPress 6.4 is now available!

This unplanned RC4 release does not impact the general WordPress 6.4 release date, which is scheduled for November 7, 2023.

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC4 on a test server and site.

You can test WordPress 6.4 RC4 in three ways:

  1. 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: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edgebleeding edge The latest revision of the software, generally in development and often unstable. Also known as trunk.” channel and “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./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). Only” stream).
  2. Direct download: Download the RC4 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress site.
  3. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command:
    wp core update --version=6.4-RC4

Read the RC1 announcement for featured highlights, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts. If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you.

The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project.

What’s new in RC4

Thanks to all contributors who tested the Beta/RC releases and provided feedback. The following updates have been addressed since RC3:

  • #55858 – Fixed patterns not working anymore as a post template for custom type posts
  • #55859 – Fixed positioning and styles for the new lightbox’s trigger.
  • #59812 – Fixed the following in Twenty Twenty-Four:
    • Removed the custom CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. for links.
    • Moved 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. stylesheet enqueuing to a new function.
    • Fixed height of newsletter landing pattern.
    • Resolved border colors in variations.

Get involved in testing

Your help in testing remains vital to developing the WordPress software and ensuring its quality. Check out this guide for instructions on testing WordPress 6.4 features.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible 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. report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or plugin

Hopefully, you have already tested your themes and plugins with WordPress 6.4 betas. With RC4, you will want to continue your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.4.

Please post detailed information to the support forums if you find compatibility issues.

Documentation

Help the Docs team put the finishing touches on end-user documentation in time for the 6.4 release. Find out what’s needed and how you can help in this post.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Thank you @meher, @rmartinezduque and @hellofromtonya for collaborating on this post.

#6-4