- See previously BP Dev Chat summary (June 9, 2021)
- In attendance: @espellcaste @vapvarun @dcavins @sbrajesh @im4th
- Slack archive
9.0.0 🎯
During yesterday’s development meeting we’ve discussed about @im4th‘s proposal to run the 9.0.0 development cycle very shortly targeting a release date before WordPress 5.8 final release is made available to the planet (~ July 20, 2021)!
@im4th was a bit worried about being too much directive and/or too ambitious, so he specified it was ok to disagree with this proposal. We quickly agreed, but here are some opinions we shared about this idea:
- “Sounds great.” @sbrajesh
- “I’m OK with your short cycle just for blocks to support the WP release” @dcavins
- “I like the idea of very targeted releases” @dcavins
- “the short release cycle is fine. The reason is good and makes total sense to me” @espellcaste
So we are going to try to do it!
9.0.0 Focus
Blocks!
As WordPress 5.8 is introducing the Widgets Block Editor, we are going to start migrating our legacy widgets. We actually already started the process from the GitHub plugin we use to develop BuddyPress Blocks. The first step is building a block for every BP Widgets and making it possible to transform existing BP Widgets to their corresponding BP Block. BP Widgets won’t disappear in 9.0.0 yet (no worries), but they’ll get a well deserved retirement progressively 😁. You can expect (at least) 10 new BuddyPress Blocks to be introduced in BuddyPress core.
A new follow component (if it’s ready for 9.0.0 release date)
@sbrajesh volunteered to satisfy a frequent request about this feature and he’s very welcome to contribute and lead this effort to make it happen! We talked about the “Followers” plugin @rayisme built which can be a source of inspiration. We’ll organize it from another specific GitHub repository. After the dev-chat, we had a complementary discussion about it, you can have a look at it for more information about early directions about the feature.
And of course, we’ll fix issues related to our latest major release (8.0.0) that may be found.
9.0.0 schedule
- Beta: July 8.
- RC: July 12.
- Final: July 16.
8.0.0 issue “monitoring”
During the dev-chat, we also discussed about the feedbacks we got from the support forums about 8.0.0. We shared our surprise that plugins that appear to rely on BP aren’t tested in the beta window. This is something we need to carry on trying to improve. Working on documentation could be a way. On this topic, @vapvarun informed us he would prepare a list about which documentation resources need updates & then update them one by one 😍. Many thanks to him: it’s a very important work that will benefit to us all.
Next Dev-Chat
It will happen on July 7 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!
Additional note about meetings during 9.0.0 development cycle
As we are running a short development cycle, @im4th will be available every Wednesday at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress for an hour or more time if needed. Don’t hesitate to ping him (@imath) for help or inputs about contributing to this version of BuddyPress.
BP Team Updates 