Need a zip from Gutenberg Master, now Trunk Branch?

This download page is for people who would like to alpha/beta test Gutenberg, but

• Don’t want to do install NodeJS and npm ✅
• Don’t want to use the command line ✅
• Don’t want to download 2.7 Gigabytes in 232,740 files ✅

A friend of mine asked me, “Every two weeks is not fast enough for you”? On October 19, 2020, there were 250 new commits made since the last release (9.1.1) and before the release of 9.2. Any issue you might file, might get a response like “Could you please try it in master, I think it was already fixed.”

If you want to actively test Gutenberg and help to find bugs, quirks or inconsistencies in work flow, you don’t want to waste anyone’s time and use the latest release. You need a fast way to get to a current version of the development.

The goal of this service is to increase the numbers of non-developers to test Gutenberg.

On WordPress Tavern, Sarah Gooding published the article:

Daily builds from Gutenberg Trunk branch.

Every morning, I build a new zip from trunk unless git merge upstream/trunk, indicates, everything is up to date. I call this version Gutenberg Nightly analog to WordPress Nightly in the Beta Tester plugin.

---

Gutenberg Nightly

May 5th, 2021

• New build today. Also, there is a new stable version 10.5.4
• Gutenberg Changelog Episode #43
• If your site doesn’t update right away, go to the GitHub Updater Settings and click on the Refresh cache button. Now you should see the update notice for the Gutenberg Nightly.
• Join us at the Discussion board, with questions and ideas or leave your comments below.
• Updates are made possible via GitHub Updater plugin, a plugin by Andy Fragen

Note: The version tag of the Gutenberg Nightly will always be on decimal ahead of the stable. So version 10.3 is in the works, the nightly version will be 10.4. That way the Nightly stays in its lane and the automatism working behind the scene are not confused by semantic versioning.

How to install Gutenberg Nightly?

Step 1: To download *.zip file, click on the above Gutenberg Nightly button

Step 2: Upload the zip file to your test site. Don’t use on live site or in production.

• Go to WPAdmin > Plugins
• Click on Add new
• Click on Upload Plugin
• Click on Choose File to select your downloaded file from your computer
• Click on Install Now

If you already have a previous version installed or the stable version, your site will notify you that this plugin is already installed and will show you meta-data from both version so you can make a decision.

It’s safe to click on Replace current with uploaded

Step 3: Activate plugin

How do get updates to Gutenberg Nightly?

Download the plugin GitHub Updater and install the same way, you did the nighly .zip file.
Once activated, this plugin will check the Gutenberg Nightly repository and alert you of updates in your WP Admin > Plugins screen.

Please note: The plugin GitHub Updater has a 12-hour cache.

If you need to update sooner, click the Refresh Cache button on the plugin’s settings page, and you’ll see the update notification on Gutenberg plugin

A side note: GitHub Updater a free plugin for all. After 60 million downloads, Andy Fragen now explores ways to monetize some advanced features of the plugin. He is working on the transition. There will always be a free version of it.

The three features: Branch Switching, REST API endpoints, and WP-CLI integration will be migrated into the PRO version.

If you are using GitHub Updater plugin, you can support Andy Fragen as a GitHub Sponsor.

History of the experiment

May 5th, 2021. Changed the tag number to 10.7., to stay ahead of the 10.6 release cycle. Today, there might be a 10.6 rc release.

April 28th, 2021. In the WordPress News post – Curious About Full Site Editing? Gutenberg Nightly was mentioned on as a Resource. 65,000 Downloads, not much movement in the last 10 days.

April 19th, 2021. Added link to add a new post to the discussion board to the plugin description of the WP-Admin plugins page. TIL need to use anchor tag, not markdown. 🤣

April 18th, 2021. New build. 65,000 downloads. Also published Gutenberg Changelog #42

April 15th, 2021. New build after 63,000 downloads. Added a note about GitHub Updater changes to come and a link to Andy Fragen Sponsor page.

April 11th, 2021. 62,000 downloads. Sarah Gooding wrote about it: “WPTavern: Set Up a Gutenberg Test Site in 2 Minutes”.

“It’s a really valuable service that not many people know about yet.”

Sarah Gooding, editor WPTavern

Join the discussion of the article

April 10th, 2021. New build today at 61, 000 downloads.

April 9th, 2021. After a few days moving and traveling, a new build was created. 60,000 downloads.

April 5th, 2021. 58,000 downloads.

Ran into an error regarding chrome driver install. Use the suggest --chromedriver-skip-install to skip it and the build went through.

April 2nd, 2021. 57,000 downloads

March 26th, 2021. 53,000 downloads.

March 24th, 2021. 52,000 downloads.

March 19, 2021. 50,000 downloads. Also, for the second day in a row, I used git fetch upstream before I auto-merge command. (Turns out I didn’t change the version in gutenberg.php, so it wouldn’t update yet, running a second build. Every time a human is involved it increases the risk of borked-up steps)

March 18th, 2021. Sometimes a build fails on first try the first thing is I “delete all node_modules directories” command: rm -rf node_modules packages/*/node_modules

March 14th, 2021. Just added the “open two sites in my browser” task to the distribute-nightly CLI: dist now command. Big thank you to Sindre Sorhus for the open() npm package.

March 10th, 2021. Refactored the distribute-nightly CLI to read the gutenberg.php file to find the version, compare it to WP tag as well as the nightly tag and decide on ‘new version’ or update asset path. For a while now I have been using dist test to do a dry run of the CLI and could test the logic for various scenarios. I also updated the cli to work with the name change of the default branch to trunk. That switch has been completed through out the process.

New merge-command:
git merge upstream/trunk -m 'prep build [date]' --no-verify

Next step for distribute-nightly open two browser windows one for testing the update in the reference environment, and this page to edit the information.

We are at 46,000 downloads.

Feb 5th, 2021. Wednesday there was a new release of Gutenberg, and this morning they released 10.1.1. I’ll take the time over the weekend to work on my automated distribution script again. Turns out, the new version creation business logic is backwards. The new version needs to look at the gutenberg.php header to find out if a new version needs to be created or not. Comparing the origin and the fork only comes into play to double-check, but the decision falls when changing the version in gutenberg.php before the build.

On another good news, Gutenberg Nightly was included a second time in this week in a post on the WPTavern. Today’s post describes all the different User-Friendly Methods for Testing Gutenberg Enhancements and Bug Fixes.

“Gutenberg Times has a page for grabbing a nightly-created ZIP of the plugin. This includes the latest features and bug fixes that have been merged into the project. For users who want to test the plugin and provide feedback to the development team, this is the easiest way to get started.” Justin Tadlock wrote.

---

February 18th, 2021. Oops, something went wrong. Yesterday my fork switched to trunk. The plugin page in my reference environment went all funny on me.

Warning: Undefined array key "master" in /home/customer/www/icodeforapurpose.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/github-updater/src/GitHub_Updater/Plugin.php on line 453

When I scrolled to the plugin list, I saw for the Gutenberg Nightly “Automatic update is unavailable for this plugin”.

This is when the GitHub updater’s feature “Enable Branch Switching” would come in. Go to the GitHub Updater’s Settings page, check the option and Save Changes

Now scroll to the Gutenberg Nightly, you see highlighted “Current branch is ‘master`, try another version with a link to the new version.

Click on “another version” and it will install the latest version.

February 17th, 2021 Ran into problems again on build run. But did get it finally resolved and another version out.

Also learned from Andy Fragen about Shields.io. The GitHub Version of the gb-nightly has been downloaded 35k times.

This was Riad’s advice: Use node 14 and npm 6 | Remove node_modules folders rm -rf node_modules packages/*/node_modules – That worked.

Rafael suggested npm clean:packages and npm clean:package-types to solve something like this.

Feb

February 10th, 2021: Same problem. No new release updating the old one.

February 8th, 2021: Ran into some trouble during the build process. The team is working on fixes: #28824 & #28849. I got past it after I downgraded npm install -g npm@6

Also, my CLI version check didn’t give me a new release because I botched the new release for 9.9.0. Forgot the 0 so semantic versioning didn’t work. 🤦‍♀️

January 25th, 2021: modified the plugin build command to NO_CHECKS=true npm run build:plugin-zip` – to not have the script run through without user interaction.

More Tweets

Just released today's build of Gutenberg Nightly a plugin zip from master Gutenberg branch. https://t.co/ZAgPGWC5UV 1/4

— Gutenberg Times (@gutenbergtimes) January 25, 2021

January 16th, 2021. The distribute-nightly CLI now includes the SFTP upload of the new build to this site’s files so the above download link always has the newest version.

January 14th, 2021. Today for the first time, the new tag and release was automatically created via the new CLI. I also found out, thanks to Andy Fragen, what cause the bug that prevented GitHub updated to trigger and update.

January 9th, 2021. Continue to work on distribute-nightly CLI for my workflow, using GitHub CLI and NodeJS. Updated successfully existing release asset via CLI.

January 4th, 2021. Used GitHub CLI to create the release.

Just added some data on prompt and added the release comments manually via copy/paste from previous releases.

Day 71, December 24, 2020. Yay, a Christmas Edition, just because of the date through. Had to fetch from upstream, seems we got out of sync again.

Day 60, December 13, 2020: New build today. Updates as usual.

Day 58, December 11, 2020: New build today, getting better at solving merge conflicts. Need to come up with some topics to discuss on the Discussion board.

Day 57, December 10th, 2020: Earlier today, Gutenberg 9.5.2. was released. Later I build the nightly update. It’s practically the same.

Day 56, December 9, 2020.

New build today on a new tag (9.5.1-nightly). GitHub also offered their new section “Discussion” and I enabled it for the repository

Also, a Thread on Twitter. with four tweets:

Day 54, December 7th, 2020. A couple of days ago, I discovered a thread on GitHub about a plugin zip etc. I suggested GT Nightly to the person seeking help. Here is his answer.

Day 52, December 5th, 2020. New built today.

Day 50 – December 3rd, 2020. That’s a good round number! Merged the updates and created today’s build. Nothing of note, except that I still haven’t gotten any further in automating more of the manual process.

Day 44, November 27, 2020 – New build uploaded.

Day 42, November 25, 2020, New build uploaded.

Learned that “Anyone who has Gutenberg Nightly installed but not active will see an update to the dot org version. If they update or auto-updates are on, they will need to re-install your version.”

I also did a typo in the version since the last one. I had a 1 too many in the version number. Now going back to 9.4.1.20201125 makes it look like it’s an older version.

Day 38, November 21, 2020, Yesterday 9.4.1 was released. Today, we have a new built. There were 81 new commit since 9.4.1 was released. The Gutenberg team is fierce!

Needed to update npm before the built and merge conflicts sometimes still throw me.

Also, fixed some typos, edit instructions for clarity and added a screenshot of the GitHub Update settings page, showing the Refresh Cache button

Day 36, Nov 19, 2020 – Brand-new build today. Still semi-manual process.

Day 33, Nov 16, 2020 – I am expecting a 9.4 Release candidate version will come out later today

Day 27, Nov 10, 2020. Second day in a row, there were no commits to master.

Day 26, Nov 9, 2020. Updated gb-nightly. Also, tried to create a standard directory on the site, so the new gutenberg.zip can be FTPed to the live Pantheon server. Turns out, the idea was too simple for Pantheon’s set-up. Need to think of something else, then.

Day 25, Nov 8, 2020. Updated nightly at 11:15. I use two test sites, where I check on things. One of them is a beta-testing site I only use sporadically. It has a bit of a trouble with GitHub Updater. It noticed yesterday’s update and displayed it.

When I clicked on update, I ran into the following error, which – as I understood it – just means the release asset for yesterday’s update isn’t available anymore.

Once, I refreshed the cache on GitHub Updates Settings, it would display the right version and I was able to update the site.

Day 24, Nov 7, 2020. Updated nightly at 8:00. Anne McCarthy mentioned the Nightly version in here blog post: My setup for the latest & greatest for testing Full Site Editing.

Day 23, Nov 6, 2020. A new nightly is available. Over the weekend, I’ll start the second phase for the project and try to automate the steps. This PR might give me a headstart.

Day 22, Nov 5, 2020. It’s the first day after an official release. 48 commits to master since the 9.3 version was released.

November 4 is the official #Gutenberg 9.3 #release day!

You can even download the #Gutenber_Nightly from this link 👉https://t.co/RjE1vqvyYF

Massive #ShoutOut to @bph for her work on thought on this project 👏

— Ahmed Chaion (@chaion07) November 5, 2020

Day 21, Nov 4, 2020 Gutenberg 9.3 was released. Also published a Gutenberg nightly for practice purposes and to see if they update is announced by GitHub Updater since the changes from yesterday. Gotta refresh that Cache!

Day 20, Nov 3, 2020: Built again a zip from master seems to might fix the issue I found yesterday. Yesterday my site to crash with fatal error. Turns out it was caused by Gutenberg and they already had a PR that fixed it. So today, I was able to test what happens when someone has the release Gutenberg plugin installed an upload the Gutenberg Nightly version. It gives an upload update screen:

Using the button ‘Replace current with uploaded’ gets you the Gutenberg Nightly installed.

Day 19, Nov 2, 2020 – Andy Fragen and I optimized the workflow and will test it Friday Nov 6th, when 9.3 is released. For today and tomorrow, I just link to the RC, Thursday to 9.3 and Friday to our new Gutenberg nightly.

Two parts:

1. Provide a gutenberg.zip build that has all the proper headers to work with GitHub Updater here

Day 18, Nov 1, 2020 – Updated Gutenberg-nightly file. Consolidated my local environment and manage a gutenberg fork, to eventually release the nightly via GitHub and GitHub Updater.

Day 17, Oct 31, 2020 – Happy Halloween! 👻 🎃 💀👿
No activity on this page.

Day 16, Oct, 30, 2020 – new build ran into quirks because just by uploading the new file, the site created a new file name, which makes it not update the yesterday’s Gutenberg Nightly, but creates a new Gutenberg plugin on your site. Had to delete the previous upload to replace with this. I am working on providing a proper update process for the gutenberg nightly version.

Day 15, Oct 29, 2020 – new build now with changed gutenberg.php which makes it a bit more obvious which version of the plugin you have installed. That’s after some testing that my changing the gutenberg.php files wouldn’t mess up the build.

Day 14, Oct. 28, 2020 – new build. 90 commits since the 9.2.2 release

Also, we had some discussion about this process on Slack in #fse-outreach-experiments, with some great ideas on make this more useable at scale.

Day 13, Oct 27, 2020 – new build after Isabel Brison “published some npm packages with bug fixes for 5.6 Beta 2″

First time for me to actually review a PR on Gutenberg repo. I followed these instructions.

Gutenberg plugin 9.2.2 was released earlier today, and there were already 58 commits since then…

WordPress 5.6 Beta 2 was released

Day 12 Oct 26, 2020 – built a new version around 11 am. I didn’t see that there was a 9.2.2 release earlier today… Duh. Also: nosolosw released this 3 hours ago · 58 commits to master since this release

Day 10/11 git pull showed a `Already up to date.` message both days (0ct. 24 + 25)

Day 9, October 23, 2020 – Didn’t get to create the build until after our recording of the Gutenberg Changelog #31, where I mentioned this page. Andy Fragen released Beta tester plugin version 3.0 today.

Day 8, October 22, 2020 — Gutenberg plugin 9.2.1 was released. You can download or update it.

• From the WordPress repository or
• From the GitHub repository
• Or wait until it shows up as an update on your plugins page.

Day 7, October 21, 2020 Gutenberg plugin 9.2 was released. –

Preparing the 227-item list for our Gutenberg Changelog episode #31 recording on October 23rd.

Day 6, October 20, 2020 For the next few days I’ll refer the visitors to the Release Candidate and the stable version of the Gutenberg plugin.

Day 5, October 19, 2020 After got the same message git status message earlier this morning, although there were 20+ more commits made, I went ahead and created a new build.

In #core-editor Isabel Brison announced she will create the Gutenberg RC 9.2 early evening my time.

Day 4, October 18, 2020. I didn’t run a new build as the git status gave me a
“Your branch is up to date with ‘origin/master” message.

Day 3, October 17, 2020 While I ran today’s build process, I listened to Helen Hou-Sandi on her Twitch channel getting frustrated that there wouldn’t be a download version to alpha-test Gutenberg and where she tried to find one. Glad I can help out.

Day 2, On October 16, 2020 there was a testing sprint in core for the Widget Screen, and the scrub master added it to the instructions for the test users.

The first time, I posted the zip-from-master file on October 15, 2020. Very early in the Gutenberg development, I would test things, be very diligent with it to make sure I got the real problem isolated, then I would write up complete issues with steps to reproduce and all the pertinent information to find out that a developer has already fixed it and I should test it again in master to make sure. I wasn’t so keen anymore to do early feature testing.

Testing WordPress 5.5 betas and release candidate, and a conversation with the developer of the WordPress Beta Plugin got me thinking, again about that situation. I wrote up some ideas on how to provide a plugin zip file from gutenberg master branch and make it available for other testers.

Big Thanks to Andy Fragen and Anne McCarthy to be a sounding board for my “This should work like my car” idea.

Questions? Email me [email protected] or DM me on WordPress Slack – @bph or leave a comment.