4.6 Release Dry Run

In preparation for the release on Tuesday, August 16 at 19:00 UTC, we’ll do a dry run on Monday, August 15 at 16:00 UTC.

The dry run will include:

  • Testing various features, including Shiny Updates, native fonts, comment/site/networknetwork (versus site, blog) queries with and without a persistent object cache
  • Generally testing the adminadmin (and super admin) and common features using a multitude of devices and browsers
  • Running our usual unit tests including the specialty groups like 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, Ajax, and external HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.
  • Doing scratch installs and upgrades from a variety of older versions
  • Triaging any bugs reported against 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., most easily found at the top of report 40
  • Updating the credits APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.
  • Reviewing the Codex release page
  • Moving about page images to the CDN
  • Checking status of translations
  • Reviewing the release post

If you’d like to help out and participate, we’d love to have you. Please come prepared to test!

#4-6, #dry-run

Release Dry Run and Window, RC2 and String Freeze

Hey everyone!

The WordPress 4.5 release proceedings will start at April 12, 2016 at 0900 PDT, with the expectation of release within 2-3 hours of that meeting time. This time allows a decent margin before 5pm EDT (April 12, 2016 at 1400 PDT), at which point a puntpunt Contributors sometimes use the verb "punt" when talking about a ticket. This means it is being pushed out to a future release. This typically occurs for lower priority tickets near the end of the release cycle that don't "make the cut." In this is colloquial usage of the word, it means to delay or equivocate. (It also describes a play in American football where a team essentially passes up on an opportunity, hoping to put themselves in a better position later to try again.) to the next day would be discussed.

To help hit that window, let’s meet the day before at April 11, 2016 at 0900 PDT for a dry run.

As a final note, WordPress 4.5 RC2 has been released, and with it, hard string freeze is upon us.

See you at the dry run, and thanks for your help in getting this far!

#4-5, #dry-run

4.2 Release Dry Run

In preparation for a Thursday release, I’d like to do a dry run for 4.2 on Wednesday 15:00 UTC 2015.

The goal would be to complete the dry run and freeze for about a day prior to release. We’ve pushed the scheduled release date by a day due to the 4.1.2 security release that went out on Tuesday morning.

The dry run will include:

  • Testing various features, including Press This and the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. Theme Switcher
  • Generally testing the adminadmin (and super admin) and common features using a multitude of devices and browsers, most notably mobile Safari on IOS and IE8
  • Running our usual unit tests including the specialty groups like 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 and AJAX
  • Doing scratch installs and upgrades from a variety of older versions

If we’re satisfied with the results of the dry run, then we’ll freeze. If not, we’ll discuss our options and make a contingency plan going forward.

If you’d like to help out and participate, we’d love to have you. Please come prepared to test!

#4-2, #dry-run

RC2 and release dry run

Various issues which came up over the weekend have meant that we’ve decided to delay the release of 4.1 by another 24 hours. The new target release date is Wednesday 17th December. It doesn’t serve anybody well to delay things this late in the day, but it’s essential to ensure the late fixes which have landed in the last few days are well tested.

RC2 will be packaged within the next few hours, once the recent batch of fixes in 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. are merged into the 4.1 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".. Here’s the current list of open tickets in the 4.1 milestone.

We’ll try to fit in a release dry-run meeting today at 17:00 GMT (December 16 2014 17:00 UTC) in #core, depending on the availability of the lead devs.

#4-1, #dry-run