Devchat meeting summary – May 20, 2020

@francina facilitated the chat on this agenda.
Meeting recap by @audrasjb and @marybaum.

Full meeting transcript on Slack

Announcements

Just a few hours before the chat, the hardworking team behind the plugins and themes auto-updates feature committed it to Core! Congrats to all!

Check out this related ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. that adds Help Tabs text to update-core, themes and plugins WP-Adminadmin (and super admin) screens: #50215

If you’d like to be part of the Full Site Editing outreach experiment, the sign-up deadline is now May 22. @chanthaboune noted that’s just to show interest, not a commitment yet.

Highlighted posts

Upcoming releases

WordPress 5.5

The 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. of WordPress is in active development (Alpha cycle).

@francina noted the team is not quite complete, but it’s confirmed that @matt will return as release leadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release.@davidbaumwald as co-lead in the role of Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. PM and @sergeybiryukov as Core tech lead. The 5.5 team will also mentor the 5.6 team.

WordPress 5.4.2

@audrasjb shared that there are 20 tickets in the milestone. Of those, 17 are closed as fixed.

@whyisjake leads this point 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., and the group firmed plans for a 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). on June 3 and a final release June 10.

Components check-in and status updates

@whyisjake was exuberant that the core team was able to merge the auto-updates code today. This is going to do a great deal to help people stay on top of updates for a safer WordPress ecosystem.

The merge is just the latest significant step toward the master plan for 2020. Lazy-loading of images merged a few weeks ago, and XML sitemaps is making great progress as well.

On the 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) side, @audrasjb shared that most of the accessibility team’s main projects for 5.5 are moving forward. Alternate views for posts, users, and comments lists should be ready for review soon.

@johnbillion wanted to note that weekly meetings for 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 have restarted, on Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC in #core-multisite. Come join them!

In Site Health, @clorith pointed out that the Theme Review Team has implemented requirements for PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher headers in themes. That move should push users in the right direction for updates.

As well, the Site Health component team has had discussions with hosting about bumping the version for Servehappy dashboard nags.

Open floor

@dlh wanted to highlight #48416. He recently encountered a use for it again. If you’re interested in the taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. component, please give it a look.

@sippis reminded everyone to register for WCEU 2020 Online Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/., which is Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 13:00 UTC. If you don’t register, you won’t get the emails you’ll need in advance, so don’t forget to register.

#5-4-2, #5-5, #dev-chat, #feature-autoupdates, #fse, #summary, #wceu, #wceu-2020

Devchat meeting summary – April 22, 2020

The chat was led by @davidbaumwald based on this agenda.

The full meeting transcript is available on Slack.

Highlighted blogblog (versus network, site) posts

@davidbaumwald shared some posts from the Make CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. blog.

5.4 Retrospective – Call for feedback: the deadline is April 30 and everyone is welcome to leave a feedback.

Proposal: Core Team Rep Elections: the deadline for nominations and self-nominations is May 4.

We’re applying to Season of Docs: a new working group that needs help!

WordPress 5.5: Call for Tickets: the deadline is April 30.

Upcoming Releases

WordPress 5.4.1 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). 1 was supposed to be released yesterday Wednesday, but there were some miscommunication between Core team and 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/ team. 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). has then been pushed back to this Friday. The Gutenberg changes that are going to be included in the release are listed in this pull request. The milestone for this point release is also cleared.

@davidbaumwald reminded that for 5.5, all the maintainers have been pinged about potential features and focuses.  If you’re a component maintainer and haven’t replied yet, please do, so scope and schedule can be proposed.

He also said that work for 5.6 release, aka all-women release, continues. All the women that expressed interest have been contacted. @chanthaboune, @angelasjin, @cbringmann and @francina will work on phase 2: identifying missing roles and cohorts to organize the team that will ride along with 5.5.

Components Check-in

@francina has pinged #meta team about having a weekly scheduled post to check Components status; @dd32 expressed some concerns about the noise that it will create. @davidbaumwald suggested to move on with this for a three-month test.

@audrasjb gave an update about plugins and themes auto-update feature. The team released version 0.6.0 of the Feature Plugin yesterday Wednesday.

The Feature PluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. contains all the identified must-have features and the UIUI User interface was reviewed by several teams. The team is now about to write the Core merge proposal post on Make/Core. More infos here.

Open Floor

@apedog asked a question about routing in WordPress Core. He stated that the WP class having $_SERVER hard-coded into it. And this would require re-writing the methods inside WP class, but without changing its functionality.

@clorith said that he’s generally against the bot idea for a general channel with lots of chatter, and the loss of potential input to backscroll. If it’s going to happen, it should be on Make/* somewhere for consistency and visibility.

@audrasjb pointed out to #16557, a long standing ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. raised by some people in the French WordPress community. It appears it would be a great SEO enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. to provide proper filters on redirect_guess_404_permalink() function.

He milestoned the ticket to 5.5.0 and refreshed the existing 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. 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. after testing it. This still needs some unit tests, but before writing them, it would be nice to get a quick review on the current proposal.

@netpassprodsr called for review on #49832.

#5-4-1, #5-5, #5-6, #summary

Dev Chat summary – April 1, 2020

@davidbaumwald led the chat on this agenda.

Full meeting translate on Slack.

This is the first devchat after the release of WordPress 5.4.

Announcements

WordPress 5.4 “Adderley” was released yesterday, March 31, 2020 as scheduled.

@audrasjb shared the stats for contributors to the release. There was a total of 552 contributors from 48 countries, 32% of them being new contributors. For more accurate release contributors statistics, please fill in your WordPress profile (if you want).

Highlighted Blogblog (versus network, site) Posts

@davidbaumwald shared the posts of CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Privacy team about the WP Consent API feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. proposal and the Guidelines for Internet Explorer 11 support in WordPress.

Upcoming Releases

@davidbaumwald reminded that 5.5 has been in Alpha phase for a while now.

Components Check-in

@audrasjb announced the release of version 0.4 of Auto-updates 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 which contains all features initially planned fot the project; as well as Themes updates and email notifications. Design, copy and accessibility reviews and feedback are welcome from plugin authors and WordPress developers.

Open Floor

@howdy_mcgee called for a feedback on these old TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets: #29418, #39447, #46768, #37245, #38074, #37255 and #24142.

@azaozz shared the link of WordPress 5.4 master list in support forums. Please, go through this before posting a topic in the forums.

@ipstenu and @azaozz called for attention on respectively these two tickets #49753 and #4975, related to 5.4.

@howdy_mcgee pointed to #24780 and said he has made a document to track the supression operators in Core codebase.

@jeffpaul asked we should start taking a look at the 5.5 early tickets to review patches and look to get some of those in sooner. Here’s for reference the Trac query for 5.5 tickets.

@jeffpaul also suggested to schedule an early-specific 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. scrub in the next couple of weeks to help move those tickets along. A few people voluntereed to lead these scrubs.

@bph reminded that the WPBlockTalk is happening on April 2, and everyone is welcome to register here.

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