Summary, Dev Chat, July 3, 2024

Announcements

• WordPress 6.6 RC2 was released yesterday, on July 2. We are still in a hard string freeze. Note that the dev-feedback and dev-reviewed workflow is required prior to committing to the 6.6 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". (handbook reference).
• Gutenberg 18.7 was released earlier today.

A big thank you to everyone who is working on these releases!

Forthcoming Releases

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.: 6.6

We are currently in the WordPress 6.6 release cycle. See the Roadmap Post for more information about what is planned for this release. The 6.6 RC3 is scheduled for Tuesday, July 9.

Next maintenance release

No maintenance releases are currently being planned. @mikachan noted that based on the latest messages in the #6-5-release-leads channel, all seems good!

Next 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/ release: 18.8

No discussion was had about the next Gutenberg release during this meeting.

Discussion

Nobody proposed any discussion topics for this week, so @mikachan addressed some follow-up tasks from our last meeting.

• Can we extend the hard string freeze date to 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). 3 for major releases?
  • @audrasjb did not have any further updates from last week.
  • @marybaum suggested that maybe RC 2 would be a possible milestone for string freeze
  • @mikachan asked if we need to update any handbook docs and suggested being more specific about this in the Release Candidate section, and note which 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). triggers the hard string freeze.
• Do we have further information on who can help progress a PR in the WordPress Importer repo?
  • @mikachan shared an update from @joemcgill that he’s reached out to some folks familiar with the WP Importer 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 to clarify next steps for maintaining that plugin and is awaiting some feedback. We hope to have an update by next week.

Open Floor

Imdad suggested that we update the documentation about the Future Release milestone in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., but wasn’t around to clarify what would be helpful.

Note: Anyone reading this summary outside of the meeting, please drop a comment in the post summary, if you can/want to help with something.

Props to @mikachan for proofreading.