GitHub Pull Requests for Code Review

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WordPress development uses SVNSVN Subversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase., but many contributors prefer to work in GitGit Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/. though 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/. Many contributors create pull requests using their own forks of the official WordPress Develop mirror so that they can use features like continuous integration and inline code commenting.

An experimental feature has been added to TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. that will let you link GitHub pull requests opened against the official WordPress Develop Git mirror to tickets. This makes GitHub contributions more visible directly in their related Trac tickets and makes collaborating across the two repositories easier.

Note: Pull requests on GitHub will not be merged. Code changes are still required to be made to the SVN repository by trusted long term contributors granted commit access.

In GitHub

  • Fork the official WordPress Develop mirror on GitHub.
  • Create a 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". on your fork, work on your changes, commit, and push.
  • Open a PR to wordpress-develop with the full URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org for the Trac ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. in the PR body. For example:
    See https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/49295
  • To make collaboration easier, make sure to check the “Allow edits and access to secrets by maintainers”. This will allow WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. committers to push directly to the branch on your fork with larger suggested changes.

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In Trac

  • The PR will be displayed below the attachments area on tickets with the following information:
    • How many lines were modified
    • Status of the PR checks (Draft/Closed, Travis CI, merge conflicts, etc.)
    • A button to view the PR
    • A button to view the raw diff
  • A bot comment will be added to the ticket’s timeline of events indicating when the ticket was mentioned and where.
  • Every time the PR receives a comment, a PR bot will post the comment onto the Trac ticket.
A screenshot of a WordPress Core Trac ticket with the new linked Pull Requests between the ticket attachments and comments.
Pull requests show between Attachments and Change History.

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Important Notes

When the PR bot syncs comments over to Trac, it will not trigger an email notification to the subscribers of the Trac ticket. For this reason, it is recommended to provide some type of ticket update in Trac itself. Most likely there will be a need to update the keywords anyway (add has-patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. or needs-testing, etc.).

Inline comments made during a code review on the PR will not be posted to the Trac ticket. These comments are contextual to specific lines at a specific state (commit) of a PR and would seem out of place as the branch’s code is iterated.

Pull requests on GitHub are not monitored. No one will be checking for new pull requests regularly. Pull requests must be attached to a Trac ticket to be considered for inclusion in WordPress Core.

Clean up after yourself occasionally. Right now, PRs are not automatically closed when the associated Trac ticket is resolved. If you open a PR, do your best to close PRs that have been merged into Core whenever you are able to.

And finally, this is an experiment. There will likely be some small bugs and things that can be improved since this is the first iteration. Please open up tickets in Meta Trac for any issues that you find. All feedback is welcome!

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