BP Dev Chat Summary : september 22, 2021

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (September 1st, 2021)
• In attendance: @sbrajesh @oztaser @muhittinsahilli @dcavins @vapvarun @johnjamesjacoby @im4th
• Slack archive.

10.0.0 Progress

• We started by congratulating @oztaser for the great contribution he brought about SQL performance improvements to the BP Notifications API (See #8426).
• @dcavins will actively (👈 adding some pressure here 😁) progress about the site membership requests feature. He will also take in charge the issue about the inconsistent behavior of Groups Invites when the friends component is not active inside the Legacy template pack (see #8550)
• @vapvarun is exploring BuddyPress statistic widgets from a plugin, @im4th challenged him to build Widget Blocks about it in 10.0.0 as well as exploring the mutual friends/mutual groups which are other Widget Block nice candidates (see #8559).
• Then we had a long discussion about raising the BuddyPress required WordPress version to 5.4 (see #8571). It’s true it’s quite a jump from 4.9 but “Tipton” was released almost 4 years ago, it’s the last WP version before the Block Editor which is probably making it a bit special. WP 5.0 to 5.3 are under 5% of total WordPress installs which makes 5.4 a good candidate for our next required version.

If a WordPress version became obsolete over a year ago, it’s a candidate for removal.
If a WordPress version’s use slips below 5% of all WP installations, it’s a strong candidate for removal.

The BP Codex

Please, share your opinion about the BP 10.0.0 required WordPress version using the comments area 🙏

10.0.0 schedule

• 10.0.0-beta 1: ~ november 20, 2021,
• 10.0.0 stable: ~ december 24, 2021 🎄

BP Rewrites feature as a plugin

It’s now possible to enjoy BP Directories as the site’s homepage using the BP Rewrites URL parser.

@sbrajesh shared his first thoughts after testing the plugin. He was a bit surprised not to find the BP Directories into the WordPress pages. In BP Rewrites, BP Directories are using a Custom Post Type without using the corresponding WordPress generated UI. Instead there’s a new URL settings page to customize almost every possible slugs. The last improvement to add about slugs is to support customizable slugs for the Member’s secondary navigation. It’s true the UI used for this settings page should be improved (a lot!).

@im4th informed about the plan for this plugin : it’s not to merge it into BP Core during 10.0.0 (or even 11.0.0) but to release it as a plugin so that a lot more people can easily test it. There’s a ticket about easing hosted on WP.org features as a plugin installation from one of the BuddyPress Admin screens to also simplify this part for users (see #8148). Switching from our Legacy URL Parser to the WP Rewrite API will need a lot more testing to make sure BP plugins and themes are behaving almost like there was no switch!

@im4th strongly encourages all BP Plugin/theme developers to give a test to this feature as a plugin to contribute to the next way BuddyPress will parse URLs.

Open floor

@im4th @dcavins & @vapvarun are going to participate to a Q&A hosted by Birgit Pauli-Haack from the Gutenberg Times on October 28 at 16:00 UTC. If you want to know more about our experience migrating the BP Legacy widgets to Block Widgets during the BuddyPress 9.0.0 “express” release, please join us! More info available there inside the Upcoming Live Q&As section.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on October 6 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!

#10-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

Dev Chat Summaries for December 21 & 28, 2016

BP 2.8 Trac Tickets

BP 2.8 – Prevent loading if PHP < 5.3 (#7277) @boonebgorges has patch. Dev feedback requested (esp. @johnjamesjacoby & @djpaulgibbs).

Removal of `create_function` usage for BP 2.8 (#7325) @tw2113 has patches.

Anonymize BP Core Dependency functions file. (#7335) Closed as wontfix.

`groups_promote_member()` shouldn’t attempt to fetch ⁠⁠⁠⁠BP_Core_User⁠⁠⁠⁠ object (#7382) Patch needs unit tests. Assigned to @boonebgorges.

Add a “buddypress” class to body element of wp-admin (#7353) @slaffik has committed fix to trunk.

Component Maintainers

@slaffik will be contacting everyone who volunteered to maintain BP components in Trac.

@dcavins would like notifications from Trac for new tickets under the Group components. He mentioned different workarounds like getting Slack notifications for the Groups component to getting the RSS feed from Trac for the specific component. @johnjamesjacoby: “We’d need to merge into our Trac what’s already in WordPress Trac. That’s probably Dion and/or Nacin.” @netweb noted after the chat that there’s a ticket in Meta Trac to get this underway.

🥂 Wishing Everyone a Happy & Prosperous New Year! 🥂

Slack logs:
Dec. 21 https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1482350517001398
Dec. 28 https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1482955219002247

#7277, #7325, #7335, #7353, #7382, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for December 14, 2016

BuddyPress 2.7.4

• Release Date: TBA
• There are currently 2 tickets in queue (1 open, 1 closed).
• Can ‘change’ visibility on registration form even for fields marked “Enforce field visibility” (#7391) Ticket has been reopened to address coding standards.
• Notice: Trying to get property of non-object (#7329) Has patch. Requested dev feedback from @rayisme
• @djpaulgibbs: We are incompatible with PHP 7.1 as things stand – and I think we may have to rely on a fix in WordPress 4.7.x as well – so that’s the sort of thing that will likely go out once it’s ready.

BuddyPress 2.8 Tickets

Some more enhancement for translators (#5784) @slaffik recommended to close the ticket.

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function get_do_autolink() on null (#7337) @slaffik has patch. @djpaulgibbs noted that patch should extend beyond preventing fatal errors to making the function usable outside the template loop.

Uninstall button and routine (#2755) This ticket would have to be put on hold until decisions are made on routines and details required to export/copy then delete/drop BP DB tables and other options.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1481745673000991

#2755, #5784, #7329, #7337, #7391, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for December 7, 2016

BuddyPress 2.7.3

• @djpaulgibbs packaged and released BuddyPress 2.7.3 on December 7, 2016. This is a maintenance release and a recommended upgrade.

BuddyPress 2.8.0

• There are currently 89 tickets slated for this dev cycle (26 closed, 63 open).
• January 4, 2017 – Beta 1
• January 18, 2017 – Release Candidate 1 (string freeze)
• January 25, 2017 – Target release date

BuddyPress 2016 Survey

• The 2016 Survey will be closing this Thursday, Dec. 15. Thanks for your participation 🙂

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1481140823000207

#dev-chat

Call for Components Maintainers

All the BuddyPress development takes place in Trac. All the tickets, most of the feature discussions and confirmed bugs, are all managed via Trac. For better tickets management, we use milestones, components, keywords and other ways to categorize everything. So far we have 24 components:

Component	Tickets	Maintainer
Activity	87	@lmoffereins
Administration	17	@slaFFik
Blogs	15
BuddyPress.org Sites	26
Build/Test Tools	8	@netweb
Core	157	@boonebgorges
Emails	17	@djpaulgibbs
Extended Profile	58	@lmoffereins
Forums	6
Friends	9	@henry.wright
Groups	58
I18N	10	@slaFFik
Media	13
Members	32	@espellcaste
Messages	16
Navigation	2
New User Experience	2
Performance	4
REST API	2	@espellcaste
Registration	6
Route Parser	7	@boonebgorges
Settings	4
Templates	55	@hnla
Toolbar & Notifications	22

WordPress (as well as some other OSS) uses an interesting approach where a person or a group of people are responsible for a specific component of a software project. The contributors have a specific interest in their chosen component, and enjoy or see the need to focus most of their contribution time on it.

In the long run, this helps that contributor quickly triage tickets in their preferred component, as they specialize in it and build up a knowledge advantage. The overall project benefits by faster review and prioritisation of new tickets.

I propose to implement BuddyPress component maintainers, with the hope that this will help move development even further and faster.

Some components, like Activity, Extended Profile, and Groups, need special love, as the number of tickets there is 50+. These components will benefit from having multiple component maintainers assigned to them.

Component maintainers don’t need to do anything special – just consider reviewing Trac tickets for your component, when you have a will and time to contribute to BuddyPress. You will be expected to look through all existing tickets, as well as new ones, provide feedback and help the larger project prioritise bug fixes and new features.

If you have any thoughts about this, or want to volunteer to become a component maintainer – please write in comments. And remember, it’s good to have several people per component, so join in even if you see someone’s mentioned your favorite component!

#buddypress

Dev Chat Summary for November 9, 2016

Trac Clean Up

@slaffik proposed the following actions to address the 654+ tickets in the Future Release milestone:
1) Go through tickets with 2nd-opinion and dev-feedback – and reply, close, or consider working on it.
2) Go through tickets that were updated years ago – and consider them to be closed by default, but read and investigate the value. If a ticket has been left for a long time in Trac, it’s either not that important, a duplicate, hard, or forgotten.

@johnjamesjacoby noted, “Proper organization, along with timely responses, I think are more important, but I agree that keeping it tidy reduces the cognitive burden of ‘holy moly there are 500 things to do.'”

Components maintainers

@slaffik and @djpaulgibbs will be preparing a post calling for BuddyPress component maintainers soon. Per previous dev chat, there’s a Google Spreadsheet @offereins prepared earlier this year. @slaffik has added a new sheet, ‘Blad 2’, listing components per trac.

Trac Tickets

BuddyPress MU (#4732) Closed as wontfix.

Add Help Pointers to Admin (#4672) Closed as wontfix.

BuddyPress 2016 Survey

The survey for Theme/Plugin Developers and Site Builders will be running through November 30, 2016. https://buddypress.org/2016/11/2016-buddypress-survey-site-builders-developers/

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1478721656000684

#4672, #4732, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for November 2, 2016

BuddyPress 2.7.2

@johnjamesjacoby packaged and released BuddyPress 2.7.2 on November 4, 2016. This is a maintenance release and a recommended upgrade.

BuddyPress 2.8.0

Schedule

• January 4, 2017 – Beta 1
• January 18, 2017 – Release Candidate 1 (string freeze)
• January 25, 2017 – Target release date

@slaffik, the 2.8 Release Lead whose “developer heart loves things like PHP5.3+ and changed focus in development”, would like to focus on the following:
1. Components with highest tasks number – because people care about them the most
2. Components with lowest tasks number – because they are good candidates to become 0-tasks, which is cool for Trac health
3. Working UI for developer features started development in 2.6 and 2.7
4. Security – He will dive into this topic as he developed a huge interest recently and will do an audit.

His ultimate goal is to decrease the number of tickets (650+) in Trac by 50%. Responding to @boonebgorges‘ question how he planned to meet that goal aside from own labor, @slaffik wrote that he is looking into implementing the concept of BP Component Maintainers which @offereins volunteered to set up a few months ago at Google Docs.

@djpaulgibbs cautioned, “I’m not sure most of the tickets in the Future Release milestone have been looked at in a long time, and I bet most of them are not assigned to the best Component (many probably pre-date the current lists of Components) so maybe we want to review them all first.”

@slaffik also would like to see improvements made on BuddyPress.org and codex.buddypress.org “but first I need to install all that locally and play a bit and see how things are working.”

developer.buddypress.org
@dcavins: “I’d love to see the new documentation site @tw2113 has been working on go public.”
@tw2113: “Regarding the dev site, a lot of me wants to say let’s get it set up and manually run for now, and we can work on automation later on. Perhaps get it logged in only access at developer.buddypress.org and have everyone start doing final QA.”

Caching improvements
@boonebgorges: “I don’t have any particular pet projects in mind for 2.8, but I plan to be around to help with miscellaneous stuff. Maybe more caching improvements.”

Build tooling, Behat, wp-admin area
@djpaulgibbs: I’m planning to help iterate on the build tooling. And continue to work on a test suite around Behat, which I’ve been doing for the last 3 months, but I don’t know if it’ll get ready enough in time for 2.8 consideration. Also the wp-admin area / welcome screens, @mercime and I have discussed them a bunch in a past. There’s so much we could do there. Maybe that’s something we could look at.”

BuddyPress Types UI
@boonebgorges: @dcavins started work on admin UI for group/member type creation. I’ve started to dig into it myself, and that could be a good kickoff for improved wp-admin stuff.
@dcavins: The first-draft code so far is publicly available at https://github.com/dcavins/bp-types-ui. Once @boonebgorges has worked it over, I imagine it will move to its original repo at https://github.com/buddypress/bp-types-ui.

Accessibility
@mercime: On my end, work on improving accessibility continues. Btw, one survey participant thanked us for a11y improvements. @boonebgorges: The a11y improvements are huge – aside from being the right thing to do, they also make it easier to sell BP with confidence to organizations that are legally required to meet certain a11y standards.
@mercime: There’s lots more to do, but it can be done. The most challenging area would be the xProfile draggable fields in wp-admin, I will do that last.

BP REST-API
@boonebgorges: “I have been working with @bronsonquick to work up a kickoff for the project. It’s been slow going because of scheduling issues between the two of us. I would like to do a public kickoff in the next few weeks, even if I have to prep the documents myself. We have some ideas for a proposed outline and work plan, which we want to bring to the community for feedback.
“Phasing in support over several releases. Prioritizing certain components and prioritizing read vs read-write with an eye toward selecting a couple of projects as good first implementations (which will guide the endpoint strategy). Anyway, I’ll work on getting that initial document ready, and then I’ll work with @slaffik to schedule a meeting where we can talk about the path forward. The purpose of preparing a document is just so we have a starting point for conversation – all the decisions will be made in the open.”

BP Follow, Component Loading
@rayisme: “For 2.8, I’m keen on #7218 for the time being. There was a ticket talking about folding BP Follow into Core, which I’ve been meaning to reply to (and will), but there are a couple of technical ideas in BP Follow that conflicts with other tickets.”

2016 BuddyPress Survey for Site Builders and Developers

The survey is will be open till November 30, 2016. Some updates from those who have responded so far:

• Six survey participants have already expressed interest in sharing how they are using BuddyPress.
• All respondents are using PHP versions 5.3 and above.
• One respondent appreciated accessibility improvements.

@johnjamesjacoby noted, “I like the idea of putting the survey front & center on BuddyPress.org, the same way WordPress.org does.” @mercime will prepare patch for the survey banner.

Your feedback is most welcome! https://buddypress.org/2016/11/2016-buddypress-survey-site-builders-developers/

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1478113373000026

#7218, #dev-chat

2016 BuddyPress Survey for Site Builders and Theme/Plugin Developers

Earlier this year, Project leads @johnjamesjacoby, @boonebgorges, and @djpaulgibbs presented a number of strategic priorities which included defining the primary intended audience for BuddyPress: Site Builders and WordPress Developers, an explicit recognition of what BuddyPress has become, and how people use it.

Help us start the year right in 2017. Your feedback is important to help us improve BuddyPress by ensuring that we’re still building what you want to use and help us determine if any course corrections are necessary.

This survey will run from November 1 – 30 December 15, 2016. There are 36 questions and could take around 15 – 20 minutes to complete.

Thank you for your participation !

=> Take the 2016 BuddyPress Survey now.

Dev Chat Summary for September 7, 2016

BuddyPress 2.7

• Beta 1 – September 21, 2016
• There are currently 108 tickets in queue (65 closed, 43 open).

Trac Tickets

Groups query overhaul (#5451) @boonebgorges has patch to boost performance and object caching for the Groups component. He noted, “There will be some backward compatibility breaks for anyone using `bp_groups_get_(paged|total)_groups_sql` filters and has listed some plugins in ticket. Dev feedback requested –  especially @djpaulgibbs and @rayisme ( @dcavins has already voiced his support 🙂  )” @rayisme has posted support as well. Update: This is now in trunk.

Hierarchical groups (#3961) @dcavins is ready to commit the patch which has a cache invalidation scheme. @boonebgorges said patch looks good and mentioned testing the patch with thousands of groups. @dcavins is prepared to test with a group generator via WP-CLI.

Friends: Add caching to BP_Friends_Friendship class (#6978) @dcavins has refreshed patch which caches friendship objects separately from a users’ friendships.

Change bp_sort_by_key() to allow key preservation (#7238) @dcavins has patch, “If anyone has reservations about changing the underlying function call, please add a note on the ticket.”

Add action hook(s) outside the group admin form (#7249) @dcavins has patch. @boonebgorges, “seems fine to me.” @tw2113 “is fine to me too, it has its docs.” 😀 Update: This has been committed to trunk

No group members search in groupname/admin/manage-members/ (#6385) @dcavins has patch. Dev feedback needed.

Improve group management members screen (#7105) @dcavins has patch. @boonebgorges has posted comment in ticket. Update: This has been committed to trunk

Update BP_buttons class to accept new arg param for $element_type (#7226) @r-a-y requested feedback for current patch.

Group type frontend integration (#7210) @rayisme noted in ticket that he was going to commit patch soon. This has @boonebgorges‘ ♥ stamp.

Only load component action and screen code when we’re on the component’s page (#7218) @rayisme has patch. Dev feedback requested for relocating functions.

Screen notifications settings page (#6712) @rayisme has patches for a separate screen notifications panel as well as for a new merged notifications (email and screen) panel. @dcavins likes the “idea of a central place to manage communication.” @boonebgorges “I haven’t tested the patch, but I definitely like the idea of a central place for managing this stuff. I’ll check it out. What to do with 3rd-party settings doesn’t seem like a dealbreaker either way.”

Use WP page names for BP directory pages headings (#6765) @hnla requested dev feedback. @boonebgorges will look into this.

Display and filter by member type on Dashboard > Users (#6060) @dcavins has updated patch. Dev feedback requested – “a lookover would be great because this should easily apply to the groups wp-admin table with slight modification.” @boonebgorges will try to take a look.

Creation of developer.buddypress.org (#6812) @tw2113 has set up test site at https://trexthepirate.com/buddypress/

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1473274934000113

#3961, #5451, #6060, #6385, #6712, #6765, #6812, #6978, #7105, #7210, #7218, #7226, #7238, #7249, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for August 25, 2016

Trac Tickets

Date xprofile field enhancement (#5500) @boonebgorges has patch and sought feedback for:
a) modeling settings data on ⁠⁠⁠⁠BP_XProfile_Field⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠_Type⁠⁠⁠⁠ — @djpaulgibbs “It would be nice to pass the data to it to handle, if possible, rather than have to touch a global.”
b) what do we think of interface for date ranges? — @djpaulgibbs “The UI is nice”. @rayisme “I’m trying to figure out the use case for relative ranges”. @mercime reported a bug.

Extract & relocate core markup functions: Theme compat include functionality & search forms file (#6844) Feedback sought. @boonebgorges has assigned it to himself for review.

Select All link missing in BuddyPress Menu Selection (#5260) Testing needed for this to be committed.

Implement user capabilities for Activity component (#7176) @djpaulgibbs “I’m hopeful someone can come in and drop a knowledge bomb” (roles and capabilities). @boonebgorges has added this ticket to his review list 🙂 @rayisme informed us that he created WP trac ticket “that would probably make dynamic caps easier to implement – https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32316.”

Fatal error – Call to undefined function wp_generate_password() in bp-core\bp-core-options.php on line 77 (#7227) @rayisme has patch. Dev feedback needed.

@mentions break instagram oembeds if same username exists on site as instagram (#7084) @websupporter has dug deep into the Instagram issue and posted results of his research. Feedback requested.

Group type frontend integration (#7210) @rayisme has a second patch which includes some new parameters to bp_groups_register_group_type() and which will allow theme devs or site admins to show group types in front end. @boonebgorges “Just browsing the patch, but looks great at a glance. I like the params as a way of controlling the behavior.”

BuddyPress 2.7

• September 21 – Beta 1
• October 5 – Release Candidate 1 (string freeze)
• October 12 – Target Release date
• There are currently 91 tickets in queue (47 closed, 44 open).

#dev-chat

#5260, #5500, #6844, #7084, #7176, #7210, #7227