What's new for developers? (February 2024)

[justintadlock]

This is a rolling discussion for a new monthly series that is intended to keep track of the items, PRs, Trac tickets, and Make blog posts that are interesting/important for developers. The goal is to publish a post on the 10th of each month with the previous month's updates.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to this monthly document. If you find something interesting, just create a new reply to this discussion below.

Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dHUKWDTZstOG7KR3uxWJejN5eUmWm0LdVvL-m4Gvi6s/edit?usp=sharing

Resources to track:

• Keeping up with Gutenberg: Index 2022
• A Week in Core
• Gutenberg plugin release posts
• Core editor chat, dev chat, performance team meeting summaries
• Dev Notes

[github-actions]

Heads-up @bph @adamziel: To include your project's news for developers, please add the information or a link as a comment to this issue. Deadline 8th of next month

[adamziel]

Some editing may be required but here's the first draft of what's new in WordPress Playground:

---

Live previews

• Theme reviewers now have a “Live preview” link for new theme submissions. 🎉
• Plugin reviewers now have a “Live preview” link for new plugin submissions thanks to amazing work by @tellyworth.
• All WordPress core PRs now get a “Live preview” link to ease the testing (like this one here).

Playground now supports multisites

Go to https://playground.wordpress.net?multisite=yes to enjoy the magic:

If you the Blueprint API, you can lean on the enableMultisite Blueprint step:

{ "steps": [ { "step": "enableMultisite" } ] }

wp-cli is now supported in the CLI and in the browser

wp-cli now works with the WASM PHP provided by the @php-wasm/cli npm package.

You can try it out with the following command:

npx @php-wasm/cli wp-cli.phar user list

Furthermore, you can also use wp-cli directly in the browser – see the live demo.

wp-cli.browser.plugin.install.mp4

The popular commands seem to work, although many limitations are yet to be discovered. Please report any issues at https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/issues

Playground Block.

The new Playground Block brings Playground into the WordPress editor.
It supports:

• Embedding Playground with a custom Blueprint
• Setting WP_DEBUG and WP_SCRIPT_DEBUG constants
• Navigating to a specific URL
• Code editor – the files become an auto-installed plugin
• Exposing PHP errors via an error_log file

Playground.block.mp4

Work is underway to use that block for interactive tutorials on learn.wordpress.org.

Other highlights

WordPress Playground now supports PHP 8.3 and mbregex and OpenSSL PHP extensions.

[adamziel]

@bph @justintadlock can we also ping @bgrgicak in these posts?

[bph]

Certainly! Added @bgrgicak to the notifier. Notification starts for the March edition.
<Waving at @bgrgicak/>

[justintadlock]

This one is ready for review now: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dHUKWDTZstOG7KR3uxWJejN5eUmWm0LdVvL-m4Gvi6s/edit?usp=sharing

Just a heads up that this is expected to be published on Saturday, Feb. 10.

[justintadlock]

Props to @ndiego for the first review.

[rmartinezduque]

Looks great to me, Justin! I just left some minor comments and suggestions for consideration. Feel free to accept or reject as you see fit.

[justintadlock]

Props to @rmartinezduque for the second review.

I'll get this moved over to the Dev Blog tomorrow and ready to publish early on Saturday.

[justintadlock]

Social copy:

WordPress 6.5 is shaping up to be an exciting release for developers. Check out all the feature updates and changes from the past month on the Developer Blog:

https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/02/10/whats-new-for-developers-february-2024/

[bph]

Shared with Marketing team for This month in WordPress February edition