Dev Chat Summary, September 14, 2023

The notes from the weekly WordPress developers chat which took place on Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 08:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.

Key Links

• Dev Chat agenda and highlighted posts followed for the meeting, prepared by @webcommsat
• Start of the meeting held on Slack, facilitated by @webcommsat

Announcements

No announcements were raised this week.

Highlighted Posts

What’s new for developers, September 2023 is available now on the Developer Blogblog (versus network, site).

• @webcommsat highlighted there were opportunities for contributors to put forward topic ideas and write for the Developer Blog or contribute to one of the approved topic submissions.

Core Editor improvement – commanding the command palette posted by @annezazu.

• The post explores the latest updates to the Command Palette, a new tool available with WordPress 6.3 designed to speed up your workflow. It also gives a preview of highlights in creation experience coming in 6.4.

The FSE Outreach Program is evolving.

• The FSE Outreach Program will become a focused space for solving issues, creating resources, and facilitating conversations around Phase 2 adoption. You can contribute by commenting on this post.
• After 6.4 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. 1, the facilitated calls for FSE testing will be replaced by ad hoc calls for testing run by the Make Test team or contributors who need specific features tested.
• Deadline for feedback: Friday, September 22, 2023

Final call: Feedback on the Learning Pathways outline from Training team from CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is invited.

• Through greater focus on the unique needs of different user groups, Learn.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/ aims to create a more intuitive and effective learning environment.
• The latest discussion focuses on how the resource can move towards consolidating the current content type offerings from courses, tutorials, and lesson plans to courses and lessons.
• Deadline for feedback: Friday, September 15, 2023.

Reminder: Proposal for an update to the Field Guide accompanying a release

• This came from an informal discussions at the Community Summit.
• Two parts of this proposal: to move earlier the date of the Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. publication by one week to the final Beta, and to create and publish a simplified Field Guide on the Dev Blog. 
• Deadline for feedback: September 15, 2023.

Monthly update on new materials on Learn.WordPress.org, September 2023 edition.

Release Updates

Current major WordPress release: 6.3

No update on minor releases or 6.3.

Next major WordPress release: 6.4

Beta 1 is 2.5 weeks away on Sept 26, 2023 as this is a short release cycle. The next triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. sessions will focus on brainstorming the remaining tickets to identify if they can be moved forward. A call to participate in 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. scrubs was made by @oglekler and @webcommsat. Also, the scrubs are a great tool to review asynchronously to learn about the WordPress development process and identify ways to get involved.

Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.4
The scrubs take place in the core channel on the Make WordPress 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/..

No other updates from the release squad.

6.4 useful links:

Release parties schedule for 6.4

Roadmap to 6.4 – this release is scheduled for November 7, 2023.

6.4 Development Cycle

Project Board for Editor Tasks for WordPress 6.4 on 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/

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/

What’s new in Gutenberg 16.6 (published September 6, 2023)

Updated schedule:

• Gutenberg 16.7 RC1 on September 20, 2023 (originally planned on September 13)
• This will be the general cut-off date for new features developed in the 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, except tasks blessed in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress..
• WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 on September 26, 2023
• Except for the blessed tasks, only fixes can be included after this date.
• Gutenberg 16.7 on September 27, 2023

Components & Tickets

The following tickets were raised by @afragen for feedback.

Core Trac #58281: Rollback Auto-Update (Rollback part 3)

Core Trac #22316: Plugin Dependencies (Yet Another Plugin Dependencies Ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.)

The discussion thread on Slack for more information.

Open Floor

An update regarding the latest Fields 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. proposal for WordPress core was raised by @sc0ttkclark

• A first post-WCUS meeting was held on Fields API on September 13. It had a great discussion on the Fields API V1 proposal.
• From this discussion, further confirmation from contributors and others who are interested in the project is wanted. A survey/vote on what the meeting wanted and did not want include in the V1 proposal was created.
• The survey has been opened up to anyone interested in the Fields API. The survey closing date was extended following feedback in Dev Chat. Deadline: survey closes at September 20, 2023 at 17:00 UTC. Survey link to vote.
• Next week on the Fields API at September 20, 2023 at 17:00 UTC in #core-fields. The codebase for the project Fields API proposal for WordPress core on GitHub.

Next Meeting

The next Dev Chat will be on September 20, 2023 at 20:00 UTC.

Props to @zunaid321 and @webcommsat for the notes

#6-4, #dev-chat, #meeting, #summary