Review Existing Documentation

[kittenkamala]

There is currently some handbook documentation that has most of the steps of the release process already outlined, and some parts might need to be updated.

There needs to be some research and discovery of the existing documentation; flagging items that need to be updated as well as items that can be re-used in the working groups documentation process

[SergeyBiryukov]

The current documentation, for reference:
https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/about/release-cycle/
https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/about/release-cycle/releasing-major-versions/
https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/about/release-cycle/releasing-minor-versions/
https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/about/release-cycle/releasing-beta-versions/

[kittenkamala]

Existing documentation:

https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/about/release-cycle/

Some sections to examine in ‘How the Release Cycle Works’

• Features as Plugins
• Version Numbering
• Updating Bundled Theme versions
• Releasing Major Versions
• Releasing Minor Versions
• Releasing Beta Versions

[noisysocks]

I had a quick look through the first three sections. I think someone who's performed a release will need to comment on the last four sections as they're more of a step-by-step guide for folks doing the actual release.

How the Release Cycle Works

• I'm not sure that what's described in Phase 1 and Phase 2 matches reality. It describes that there is a meeting, contributors decide which features should be in a release, and then that work on these features begins. I think in reality work has already begun on many features (via an uncommitted patch, via a feature plugin, or via Gutenberg) and that, come release time, the release lead in conjunction with component maintainers decides which features should be finished for the upcoming release.

• The paragraph about minor releases is good but I think it ought to say that minor releases are not to contain new features instead of new files.

• We could make the last sentence more specific, e.g: "You can learn more about the current release cycle in the sidebar of the development blog, underneath the Current Release heading."

Features as Plugins

• I think this section ignores the elephant in the room: Gutenberg 🐘. Lots of big features that end up in WordPress nowadays start out life in the Gutenberg repository where they receive testing via the Gutenberg plugin and then are included in the next Core release.

• I searched Make/Core and it looks like the last accepted merge proposal was in April 2017. It would be worth researching some recent feature plugins (Site Health, GDPR, Gutenberg, REST API) to get a sense for how things work nowadays.

Version Numbering

• This all looks good to me!

[francescamarano]

I'll mark this as Help Wanted and see if we can get some experienced committers and/or leads to go through it