Dev Chat Agendas | Dev Chat Summaries | Wishlist | Dev Notes | Field Guide | All Posts Tagged 5.3

WordPress 5.3 will be the final major release of 2019 and aims to polish current interactions and makemake A collection of P2 blogs at make.wordpress.org, which are the home to a number of contributor groups, including core development (make/core, formerly "wpdevel"), the UI working group (make/ui), translators (make/polyglots), the theme reviewers (make/themes), resources for plugin authors (make/plugins), and the accessibility working group (make/accessibility). the UIs more user friendly. Matt Mullenweg is the Release LeadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release. for 5.3, Francesca Marano is the ReleaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. Coordinator, David Baumwald is the Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. PM, Riad Benguella is the Editor Tech Lead, Mark Uraine is the Editor Design Lead, Andrew Ozz is the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Tech Lead, Anders Norén is the Default Theme Design Lead, Ian Belanger is the Default Theme Wrangler, Justin Ahinon is the Docs Coordinator, JB Audras is the AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) Lead, Mike Reid is the Marketing Lead, and Mike Schroder is the Media Focus Lead. All release decisions will ultimately be theirs to make and communicate while gathering input from the community. There will be a new bundled theme included in 5.3.

Note that WordCamp US will be from November 1-3 and the US Thanksgiving holiday is November 28-29. Both tend to involve travel for a number of people and reduced activity; thus the schedule was crafted to allow ~2 weeks buffer from the target release date until Thanksgiving week. Given the effort that goes into a 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., WCUS, and the end-of-year holidays it is safe to assume that activity on core will slow dramatically after the 5.3 release until January 2020; enjoy that downtime and thank you all for your contributions! 🙏

Release Schedule

8 May 2019 Trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. is open for business. (Post-5.2)
31 July 2019 5.3 Kickoff meeting
27 August 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
5 September 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
12 September 2019 APAC-Friendly Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
18 September 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
23 September 2019
(+7w 5d)
Beta 1, begin writing Dev Notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include: a description of the change; the decision that led to this change a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. and About page, and last chance to merge feature projects. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
From this point on, no more commits for any new enhancements or feature requests in this release cycle, only 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. fixes and inline documentation. Work can continue on enhancements/feature requests not completed and committed by this point, and can be picked up for commit again at the start of the WordPress 5.4 development cycle.
25 September 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
30 September 2019
(+1w)
Beta 2 and continue writing Dev Notes and About page. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
2 October 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
7 October 2019
(+1w)

8 October 2019
Beta 3, continue writing Dev Notes and About page, and soft string freeze. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
9 October 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
15 October 2019
(+1w 1d)
Release candidate 1, publish 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. with Dev Notes, commit About page, begin drafting release post, and hard string freeze. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
17 October 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
21 October 2019 Bug Scrub (Slack archive)
22 October 2019
(+1w)
Release candidate 2, update About page images, and continue drafting release post. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
29 October 2019
(+1w)
Release candidate 3, update About page images, and continue drafting release post. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
5 November 2019 (+1w) Release candidate 4, though may be difficult with folks returning from WCUS. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
11 November 2019
(+6d)
Dry run for release of WordPress 5.3 and 24 hour code freeze. (Slack archive)
11 November 2019 Release candidate 5. (Slack archive) (Zip download)
12 November 2019
(+1d)
Target date for release of WordPress 5.3. 🎉

To get involved in WordPress core development, head on over to TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. and pick a 5.3 ticket. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Get your patches done and submitted as soon as possible, then help find people to test the patches and leave feedback on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.. Patches for enhancements will not be committed after the dates posted above, so that we can all focus on squashing bugs and deliver the most bug-free WordPress ever.

If you want to dive deeper into 5.3, development is discussed at a weekly meeting in the #core 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/. channel and occurs next at Wednesday at 21:00 UTC. Wish us luck!