In order to respond to both site builder and developer feedback about core experimental plugins in WordPress maintenance support plans 8, the committer team is proposing the following changes starting with the WordPress maintenance support plans 8.5.x branch (which is now open for development):
Experimental plugins that have alpha stability will only be committed to development branches of WordPress maintenance support plans 8.
If an experimental plugin has not achieved at least beta-level stability by the alpha1 release of the branch itself, its development will move to the next development branch and the plugin will not be included in the branch’s alpha release. (Or, alternately, the plugin may be removed from core if there’s no clear path to stability.)
Once an experimental plugin reaches beta stability, we now require (a) upgrade paths, and (b) backwards compatibility (or a deprecated BC layer) for any API improvements.
For example, if an initiative team wanted to add a new experimental plugin to core for their desired feature, they could introduce a patch that met the requirements for an experimental plugin and it could be committed to 8.5.x as an alpha-stability experimental plugin. However, by 8.5.0-alpha1 (the week of January 17, 2020), either the plugin would need to be in “beta” level stability (which means its API and data model would be considered stable, with upgrade paths and API BC layers provided when needed), or it would be left in the 8.6.x branch, but removed from the 8.5.x branch before tagging the alpha. 8.5.0 would ship without this new functionality, but (if completed in time) it could be available in the 8.6.0 release.
These policy changes are intended to address a number of frustrations with the existing experimental plugin process and to better meet expectations for non-core site builders and developers.
For background on this decision or to provide your feedback, see the core policy issue that discusses this proposed change. The issue is open for community feedback until September 6, 2020. Thank you in advance!
Source: New feed
Cheap WordPress maintenance support plans core announcements: Proposal to adjust experimental modules process/requirements in response to user/developer feedback
