@francina led our discussion from this agenda.
Announcements
The chat marked week 2 of th 5.4 release cycle.
@francina announced that @davidb has posted this bug-scrub schedule, which also lists regular design and editor triages. Remember, you can get serious props by hosting a scrub of your own — and you can pick the tickets to suit your own interests!
She also confirmed the schedule and release squad.
Schedule:
- Beta 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: 11 February 2020 (4 weeks from kickoff)
- Release 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: 03 March 2020 (3 weeks from beta 1)
- General Release: 31 March 2020 (3 weeks from release candidate 1)
Squad:
Third, @francina referred the group to @jeffpaul’s 5.4 release-cycle page and then, comparing herself to a DJ at a wedding, opened the floor to other announcements.
That prompted @karmatosed to link a proposed list of design priorities for 5.4.
Answering the question from @francina, @karmatosed asked the group (plus you and me, dear reader) to comment on the post with our feedback. Priorities are open, as long as we keep in mind what we can finish by February 11 — Beta 1.
(Ed. note: If this is your first major 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. cycle, and as a reminder for the rest of us, new features and enhancements must be largely complete by the time we release Beta 1. We call this a feature freeze.
Further betas and the release candidates are for bug 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. fixes and patches. There’s also a string freeze at RC1.)
Highlighted Posts
@francina turned the group’s attention to the Release Model Working Group post that sets the kickoff date for January 29.
Again, if you’ve got thoughts on how to organize the work, or things you’d like to see happen, please comment on the post.
See more of the conversation here.
@karmatosed made one final point, asking if the working group could alternate meeting times to include the whole globe, and devchat attendees readily agreed.
Components Check-in
@ianbelanger asked for help testing and submitting patches for 19 bundled-theme tickets and 39 Twenty Twenty tickets, so at lease some of them can get into 5.4.
@azaozz reported fast work on wp-lazy-loading and asked for more eyes/reviews/suggestions/testing.
https://github.com/WordPress/wp-lazy-loading
@johnbillion and @clorith reported steady progress on tooling and Site Health, respectively. @xkon reported some small fixes and enhancements in privacy. See the transcript.
@jorgefilipecosta announced the release of Gutenberg 7.3, “featuring a very significant performance enhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature..” (I think he means it’s faster. 😜)
Here’s the post:
https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/01/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-january/
He touted the navigation block 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. as the big feature for 5.4 and pointed us all (you too, dear reader) to this board for tracking the status for that block.
Finally, @audrasjb brought up Plugins and Themes auto-updates, tickets #49199 and #48850. He pointed out we still need feedback from a variety of core committers and component maintainers if we’re going to get these into 5.4.
After a resounding chorus of emoji support for @audrasjb‘s points, @francina called Open Floor.
Nobody came forward, so devchat ended eight minutes early.
#5-4, #dev-chat, #summary
