Freeze (just in time for fall!)

It’s that time in the dev cycle again: feature freeze. As usual, we are running a bit behind. We were supposed to have freeze a week ago for everything being worked on by contributors, then a week for the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team to do a scrub and commit or 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.) all those enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature./feature requestfeature request A feature request should generally begin the process in the ideas forum, on a mailing list, as a plugin, or brought to the attention of the core team, such as through scope meetings held for each major release. Unsolicited tickets of this variety are typically, therefore, discouraged. tickets as well as finishing up their own 3.3 feature dev before full on freeze today. We gave contributors some extra time at last week’s dev chat as there were some features not quite ready (HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. emails, Settings CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets., etc). Sadly, the extra time didn’t lead to commits, and now we’re just a week behind. So!

This is freeze.

1. All enhancements and feature requests that do not have a ready patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. will be punted.
2. All enhancements and feature requests that have a patch but no comments showing that the patch has been adequately tested will be punted.
3. All enhancements and feature requests that have a patch that has been adequately tested will be reviewed by the core team and either committed or punted.
4. No more enhancements or feature requests will be added to the 3.3 milestone.
5. The core team will commit their remaining new features, and Jane + some UXUX User experience volunteers will do some testing of UIUI User interface changes over the coming week. Core team (and anyone who volunteers to help) will revise UI of new features based on findings during testing on a rolling basis.

Then comes 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., during which we’ll be in 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.-fix-only mode. Yes, there is such a thing as a UI “bug,” but “we should have done this sooner” is not a bug.

This cycle has already seen two deadline pushes, so from now on we’re going to do our best to be mercilessly strict with the deadlines, even if it means cutting things. Anything that isn’t ready will be cut. “not done” is not the same as “has bugs,” and we need to be better about respecting that difference. We had plenty of time to get these things in; we all made decisions about priorities over the last few months.

It is now too late to ask us to get something in for 3.3. Start working on it for early 3.4.

#3-3, #schedule

3.2 Schedule Update

We were scheduled to do RC1 today. With around 100 tickets in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., this is not happening. We did a giant push to meet the 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. deadline, but then people went back to their other stuff, dealt with 3.1.3 security release along with beta 2, and generally slowed down. I’m pushing back the 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). target date on the schedule to Monday.

In the words of Lester Bangs (by way of Cameron Crowe via Almost Famous), let’s be honest and unmerciful in today’s scrub.

  • If there’s a patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing., make the call: is it in or out? If it’s not a blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. or 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. and the patch isn’t quite there, 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.) it, even if it is your pet ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..
  • If there’s not a patch, how bad is the 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.? Blocker or regression? Assign it to someone and get a patch for testing by tomorrow. Not? Punt it and hit it early in 3.3.
  • We need to fish or cut bait on a number of lingering small UIUI User interface things. If someone wants to run through them with me we should be able to knock them out today or by tomorrow at latest.
  • Licensing tickets. We need to do the right thing in all cases, and we need to do it this release.
  • String freeze. I’ll do a run through today/tomorrow and look for anything that we’d planned to update but haven’t yet, including Credits and Freedoms screens. We need to do a check on text in help tabs,too, some still need updating. Will write text change patches myself or have a volunteer do them.
  • Any tickets left in the milestone by EOD tomorrow should be blockers.

Let’s get this released tidied up and shipped so we can get started on 3.3!

#3-2, #schedule, #scope