Now that WordPress 7.1 has entered the Release Candidate phase, the following policies are in place.

These policies mainly cover how and when Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. committers can commit. For non-committing contributors, this post may help explain why Core committers make certain decisions.

In order to not interfere with ongoing efforts to improve github actions, branching has been delayed until early next week. This post will be updated after the branch is created.

As a result, all commits to trunk will require double sign-off by two core committers until the 7.1 branch is created.

The dev-feedback keyword should be used to request a second committer A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component.’s review, dev-reviewed should be added to indicate a second committer has reviewed and approved the commit to trunk. Commits to the test suite do not require double sign-off. Only committers should add the dev-feedback and dev-reviewed keywords.

RC1 release marks the hard string freeze point of the release cycle. While this normally means the Polyglots team Polyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ can begin translating strings from the upcoming release into their local language, a version-specific branch is required. As a result, strings will not be available for translation The process (or result) of changing text, words, and display formatting to support another language. Also see localization, internationalization. until the 7.1 branch is created.

Despite this, the normal rules for hard string freeze will be followed:

• No new strings are permitted. Exceptions can be made for critical strings (the About page, for example) provided they are properly tagged with the i18n-change keyword in Trac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. and the Polyglot team is made aware.
• Existing strings can be removed and/or duplicated if needed.

Seek guidance from the Polyglots team reps for any strings reported as buggy. A buggy string is one that can not be translated to all languages in its current form. 

Only two types of tickets may be placed on/remain on the 7.1 milestone:

• Regressions: bugs that have been introduced during the WordPress 7.1 development cycle, either to existing or new features.
• Test suite expansion: tests can be committed at any time without regard to code or string freezes. This can cover either new or existing features.

After the 7.1 branch is created, this post will be updated and a @committers announcement will be made in slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ informing everyone that trunk is open for commits related to the next version of the software.

Props @joedolson for peer review.

#7-1