Performance Chat Summary: 13 June 2023

Meeting agenda here and the full chat log is available beginning here on Slack.

Table of Contents

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Announcements

Welcome to our new members of #core-performance [Slack thread]
WordCamp Europe contributor day was a great success – thank you to those who joined!
- @flixos90 On my side we were working on the script loading strategy API, testing the PR https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/4391 by modifying some plugins and core code to use it. We also discussed how it works and were able to find a few nuances and little bugs that were fixed
- @spacedmonkey we onboarded a number of contributors to profiling / benchmarking
Release 2.4.0 scheduled for Monday June 19
- Agreed to postpone this to Tuesday June 20 to support several team members being out for the US holiday
Upcoming Beta 1 for the 6.3 release on Tuesday June 27, 2023
- @joemcgill I’m still not sure how we can best test/support the effort that is going into adding the Fonts API in 6.3. I raised the question last week in the core chat: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW/p1686169592117799
- @flixos90: @hellofromtonya shared with me last week that one of the main focuses related to the Fonts API is https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/50927, which is still an early PR, but would be great to get into WP 6.3
- @joemcgill There aren’t any specific tickets to sync this code to the WP repo that I could find. Does anyone else here have any more insight? Or have plans to own the performance impact research for this feature?
- @spacedmonkey Is it mentioned here? – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/51077
- @joemcgill This seems like the most likely ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46370
Updates to our Core Performance Handbook with the introduction of the Profiling vs Benchmarking article
- @flixos90 2 more articles https://make.wordpress.org/performance/handbook/measuring-performance/best-practices-for-performance-measurement/ and https://make.wordpress.org/performance/handbook/measuring-performance/benchmarking-php-performance-with-server-timing/ were published right before WCEU
- @joemcgill I have a draft article for profiling with XHProf waiting review from @flixos90 and @spacedmonkey so hopefully that will be ready to publish soon as well

Priority Projects

Server Response Time

Link to roadmap projects

Contributors: @joemcgill @spacedmonkey @aristath

@spacedmonkey:
- Committed
- Tickets created
- In need of code review
  - https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/50636

Database Optimization

Link to roadmap projects

Contributors: @aristath @spacedmonkey @olliejones @rjasdfiii

No updates this week

JavaScript & CSS

Link to roadmap project

Contributors: @mukesh27 @10upsimon @adamsilverstein @westonruter

@joemcgill For Script Loading Strategy: we’ve finished addressing most of the outstanding issues with the PR. Thanks to all who helped test it at Contributor Day last week. My goal right now is to get the last details wrapped up so we can get a final from the release team to get this merged. The main outstanding question that we still need to resolve is whether our approach for managing inline scripts attached to delayed script handles is acceptable. I’d like to get a second opinion from someone in #core-js but am not confident on who should weigh in https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/4391
@spacedmonkey Created ticket –https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58519
- Somewhat unrelated, but I got a PR into jetpack that will inline block styles – https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/pull/31214
@westonruter I’m working on fixing an issue with the timing for when the delayed inline script loader is added to the page. I found some cases when it is not printed at the right time (or at all). I have some refinements I’m making this morning before ready for review: https://github.com/10up/wordpress-develop/pull/75
@joemcgill I’d say the three issues in the “in progress” column here is what we’re trying to wrap up: https://github.com/orgs/10up/projects/14 is that correct?
- @westonruter I think so, yes. The last one just needs a quick review from @mukesh27
@flixos90 Is there already a (draft) PR for the reduced implementation?
- @joemcgill There is not. That will be the next thing to work on as soon as we’ve got the ideal version ready to go
- @joemcgill Honestly, hoping we don’t even need it, but want to be ready to put that together in the next week so we have time for reviews before the beta 1 cutoff
- @flixos90 I think the main question I’d like to sort out this week is how we will handle the fallback approach in case we don’t get any inline script handling in. I’m personally leaning towards:
  - change defered/async strategy to blocking if they have an after script
  - do not change strategy if it’s a before script
  - @joemcgill Please comment on https://github.com/10up/wordpress-develop/issues/69 where we can work out those details. I agree with your bullet points, though

Images

Link to roadmap projects

Contributors: @flixos90 @thekt12 @adamsilverstein @joemcgill

@flixos90 I see @thekt12 has updated https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/4495, so I’ll review that today – probably the only high priority for images right now
- @joemcgill What support do you need to help get that wrapped up and ready for commit in the next week?
- @flixos90 Test coverage wasn’t added before because we needed to figure out the exact API, so writing test coverage before that would have required a bit too much extra iterations
- @flixos90 testing instructions will also be worked on this week
- @spacedmonkey and @10upsimon have offered to support with reviews

Measurement

Link to roadmap projects

Contributors: @adamsilverstein @olliejones @joemcgill @mukesh27

No updates this week

Ecosystem Tools

Link to roadmap projects

Contributors: @joegrainger

@joegrainger We have been working on implementing the initial checks for the Plugin Checker. We have come across a strange issue with PHPUnit tests but myself, @mukesh27 and @joemcgill have synced on this and we have plan forward. We plan to have the checks completed over the coming days. You can follow the progress on the GitHub repo here. Thanks!

Creating Standalone Plugins

Link to GitHub overview issue

Contributors: @flixos90 @mukesh27 @10upsimon

@flixos90 Still awaiting approval of the Dominant Color Images plugin in the plugin repo

Open Floor

@spacedmonkey PHP 7.0 looks like it will be the min required version for WP 6.3. I wonder if there is anything we could take out of core, likely backward compatibility shim etc that might improve performance #57067 Example
- @spacedmonkey I also wonder if we should up the min support php version for plugin-checker and performance plugins
- @flixos90 I completely missed that, where was that announced?
- @spacedmonkey Not officially, but it was marked as accepted. I believe a post blog is incoming see https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57345