@chanthaboune led a lively discussion that touched on a variety of things that affect the substance and timing of version 5.3.

@marybaum took notes.

Announcements

@chanthaboune started off by thanking all the posters who commented on the Backporting Security Fixes post.

Then she pointed the group to a little light reading: a new proposal on how we auto-update old versions.

@chanthaboune‘s third announcement: after much discussion on the implementation of Minimum PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher Versions, a consensus has emerged, so here’s the plan:

Anyone running PHP 5.1.1 through 5.6 will see a warning that they’re on an outdated version and a recommendation to update.

For now, it’ll be just a recommendation and not a forced upgrade, according to maintainers @clorith and @miss_jwo.

Next Major: 5.3

Timing:

It’s time to weigh in on the target dates. The place to do it is here: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/08/07/wordpress-5-3-planning-roundup/

@chanthaboune said final decisions will happen this week on that post.

Default Theme:

Yes, there will be a Twenty Twenty default theme, and it will be in 5.3! The group discussed choosing a theme that’s already doing cool stuff with all the new WP features—and limiting changes to what’s required in a default theme.

@mapk will champion that effort.

Q&A:

@chanthaboune opened the floor to 5.3 questions, and here’s what came up.

@miss_jwo asked how component maintainers can get committers’ eyes on code ahead of time, and @karmatosed suggested triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. sessions. With confirmation from @sergeybiryukov, @chanthaboune said there’s a workflow tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) for early review.

Josepha also commented that she thinks having a dedicated coordinator for each of the last several releases has worked very well.

@joemcgill suggested naming specialty leads for the release above and beyond the editor and CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. leads—for example, a design lead for things like the About page and marketing materials, at a minimum.

@desrosj then commented on the fact that the last two releases have had a designated person coordinating and publishing dev notesdev 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.. He noted that meant the notes got published sooner than usual, and @marybaum couldn’t resist saying that the sooner they get written, the sooner they get edited for conversation and clarity. Or, as we’re calling it in Core, folksing up the copy, notes and strings. 😜

Ben Matthews asked when we’ll know what the feature-improvement details are, and Angelika Reisiger had a similar question about the scope of 5.3.

@chanthaboune answered that in the past, the docs maintainers aimed for the first 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., with an absolute deadline of the first 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)..

@presskopp asked about news from the Triage Team, and whether there will be patches coming in for 5.3. That question led to a round of praise for regular triages and kudos for Design, 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/ and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. 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. for using triages extensively.

Here’s a point @desrosj made:

It’s also important to note that while committing may occur as a result of triaging when tickets are just ready, the goal of the triage team is not to commit changes. The goal is to make tickets actionable. That could mean different things for tickets (committing, closing, or unblocking). There are many committers that are not actively trying to triage many tickets.

@desrosj

A final question asked about the status of XML sitemaps in Core. @chanthaboune said she’d been told the feature isn’t likely for 5.3.

Next Minor: 5.2.3

@chanthaboune said she thinks the current 5.3 schedule leaves room for a minor or two if we need it for important fixes. She added that @jeffpaul has started pulling things together for a 5.2.3. He wasn’t in the chat, so look for updates here in this very blogblog (versus network, site) on that subject!

Calls from Component Maintainers

@garrett-eclipse announced a new discussion around consent and logging for user privacy. For info and to weigh in or contribute, here’s the post.

@chanthaboune brought a component need to the group: apparently user docs for 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 need a champion. @marybaum and @paaljoachim showed interest in helping.

Open Floor

@chanthaboune asked for eyes on ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #18857, and with that, the devchat hit the one-hour mark.

#2020theme, #5-3, #dev-chat, #summary