Tide Chat Summary: November 10th and December 8th

This post summarizes the Tide chats from November 10th (agenda, Slack archive) and December 8th (agenda, Slack archive) in the #tide 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/. channel.

Reminder that the current Tide focus is integrating PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. Compatibility data from Tide into 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/.  Once PHP Compatibility is integrated into WordPress.org, we’ll assess the next focus to provide the biggest impact to the community.

Node refactoring

  • @ivankk crafted 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. spec
  • @derekherman shared that the rebuild on Node past couple of months will make code more approachable compared to Golang version
  • @derekherman aiming to share code publicly in coming weeks, Staging API functioning, aiming for stable release in January and then deprecate old repo versions
  • @derekherman noted that plan is to work with WP Engine for new version of Tide as data source to support PHP Compatibility Checker 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
  • The new codebase leverages Firebase hosting, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, and Datastore along with the OpenAPI Specification for our API and Vuepress for the docs. Assumption is it will cost much less to maintain and be a lot easier to contribute to.
  • Main help once the new repos and Staging URLs are shared will be on testing and helping update docs

Tide Goals

  • Options to consider post-PHP Compat work are:
    • Displaying Tide audit results on WP.org plugin/theme pages
    • Displaying Tide audit results (immediate and historical) in a private view for plugin/theme developers
    • Ability to editorially include compatible PHP versions for plugins/themes that include backcompat code
    • Assist plugin/theme review team review processes via automated code reviews
    • CI bot / 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 tied to WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. / Theme Review Team ruleset for plugin/theme developers to integrate to GitHub repos & get feedback earlier in their development process
  • @jeffpaul likes idea of helping out plugin/theme review teams if Tide can align to their goals/problems to solve
  • @jeffpaul also likes idea of showing warnings in WP Admin add plugin/theme screens if users site may not be compatible based on PHP Compat Tide has identified for a plugin/theme
  • Will look to identify Tide’s goal(s) / focus(es) in future Tidechat, but please provide feedback on what you feel is worthwhile!

Next meeting

The next meeting, a 30-minute Tide status update and open floor discussion, will take place on January 19, 2021 at 19:00 UTC in the #tide Slack channel.  Please feel free to drop in with any updates or questions.  If you have items to discuss but cannot make the meeting, please leave a comment on this post so that we can take them into account.

#summary, #tide-chat