Include Gutenberg editor enhancements in minor WP updates

[knutsp]

Core is almost always way behind Gutenberg. In 2018 WP minor updates was extended to include new things and worked well. The situation now is not well for WordPress.

At least for year rest of 2019 and 2020.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Just noting there has been some discussion about this recently on make/core:
​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/11/25/devchat-after-the-hour-november-20/

Per @youknowriad:

By December 11, Gutenberg will be ahead of Core with about 5 releases and this is a problem. 12 Gutenberg releases shipped into 5.3 . This is too much for a single WordPress release and with the current schedule, it’s seems like this is going to be similar for 5.4… This is not tenable for the future. It’s hard to stabilize and ship, it’s hard to summarize the changes for third-party developers and users, it’s more scary to ship and people were recommending the plugin to be installed for their clients (and it’s risky since the plugin is a development plugin). So how to reduce that gap is a big issue that needs solving IMO.Ideally I do think a shorter release cycle for majors is better. (Why not just a 5.4 in like end of January 😇 ), otherwise we’ll have to include enhancements in minors.

These posts might also be relevant:
​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/11/21/tentative-release-calendar-2020-2021/
​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/02/27/major-and-minor-version-release-cadence/

[desrosj]

Hi @knutsp,

Thanks for opening this ticket! I am going to close this out only because this is a wider discussion that will be better served with wider discussions elsewhere, not because it is a bad suggestion or idea (invalid is certainly inappropriate as a catch-all resolution here).

The Gutenberg plugin is built and released at a much faster pace than Core. These releases often include new features being built with the target timeline of being ready for the next major version of Core. Because of this, months (and sometimes weeks) after a major release of WordPress, it becomes almost impossible to cherry pick specific changes to backport into WordPress Core because they are often interwoven with the new block editor features that must wait for the next major version of Core.

With the release cadence that has been followed in 2019/2020, it seems that this has been a bit better, as all changes in Gutenberg are synced with Core once every 3-4 months.

It's also important to remember that the plugin is not technically always "Core ready". It's often used as a test bed to try out different ways to solve various problems. So wholesale syncing is not always appropriate.

[knutsp]

wontfix seems appropriate then.

[desrosj]

I only opted against wontfix because with every release, everyone has been working to improve the balance between backporting changes while moving towards the next major versions of WordPress.