As most of you should know by now, for the last six weeks we’ve had a survey running on the themes upload page to get feedback on how theme authors would like to upload updates to their themes in the future.
The primary purpose of the survey was to determine what the preferred method of uploading themes would be, as the ZIP upload is often touted as a pain point in the entire process.
Thank you to the 256 people who submitted feedback. I’m going to summarise the results here for transparency and the next steps the Meta team are going to take.
As can be seen below, the preferred method is to continue with ZIP Uploads, followed by Git/GitHub integration, Direct SVN access, and finally “anything other than ZIP, SVN, and GIT”.
Reading the free-form feedback, there’s a two main things that caught my attention:
- Not everyone uses GitHub (or even a VCS), and didn’t want to see that be the only option.
- Some who preferred GitHub, suggested that SVN was the second best option.
It’s clear that for some authors ZIP uploads are preferable, There are no plans to remove this. But it’s also clear that many others wish to use a version-control system of some form to automate releasing updates – to remove the need to create a ZIP and upload it manually.
Next Steps
Here’s the suggested immediate plans forward:
- Enable theme updates to be submitted via SVN. #5899-meta
- Remove Trac tickets for theme updates.
- Create/Encourage the creation of a GitHub action, to automate releasing from GitHub to WordPress.org.
I’ll create Trac tickets to track these once everyone has had a chance to review this post, and given me a chance to clarify any points.
Enabling access to SVN
Enabling access is straight forward, but processing updates from SVN is not as easy. We’ve determined that the simplest way to make this happen is to require some very specific rules be followed:
- Updates must be stored in a `/THEME/VERSION/` structure similar to the existing use.
- Once an update is committed, it cannot be changed or altered in any way – even just to fix a typo.
- Versions must be in a standardised format, and must be higher than an existing version.
Themes.svn would be used as a “deployment destination” rather than as the primary location of development for a theme. One commit per version. No Trunk folder. etc.
Remove Trac tickets for updates
By disabling the trac ticket creation for updates to existing live themes, we can reduce the noise in Trac and focus it on being Theme Reviews, while at the same time simplifying the process for importing from SVN.
Git/GitHub integration
The WordPress.org Plugin directory doesn’t have any Git/GitHub integration, but there is a 3rd-party supported action which allows for Plugin authors to have GitHub tags/releases be pushed to the WordPress.org plugins SVN repository automatically. Git-svn is also used by some here to keep everything within their own Git repository.
By enabling SVN access for themes, we’re opening the possibility of a similar action to be created, and leaving the door open for a future iteration where GitHub is built directly into the Plugin & Theme directories.
Thoughts? Concerns?