Integration, exposed

Cold numbers:

37 issues have been successfully integrated with 5 rejected and 100 in the queues. That's 88% success, slightly above average!

Notes:

• Since Monday, April 27th, we are already within the continuous integration period, aiming to roll stuff upstream often. That implies that a bit extra of responsiveness is really welcome from everybody when an issue is being processed.
• If you are guessing when Moodle 3.9 code freeze is... well, it's "today" (Monday, May 4th), more exactly @ 11:00 UTC. Tick, tock, tick... and, yes, just 5 weeks to Moodle 3.9 release, fun times!
• Also, in 1 week we'll be releasing the next minors (3.5.12, 3.6.10, 3.7.6 and 3.8.3), including the latest bug fixes and security issues. Monday, May 11th.
• Worth commenting that, after a long process, it seems that we are close to, officially, support PHP 7.4 (both for 3.8.3+ and 3.9). There may be some well hidden details here and there but, overall, all tests are passing and all the seek & destroy changes required have been processed.

Hot topics:

• MDL-65967 : Show missing links to recycle bin in Boost.
• MDL-67915 : Regression in TCPDF lib may lead to deleted images in some modules (confirmed with mod_certificate).
• MDL-67850 : quizaccesss_seb integrated into core.
• MDL-68445 : Bump to Behat 3.6.1
• MDL-68329 : Improved cache performance visualisation on footer (funnily, it caused a small - but acceptable - performance regression, ).
• And lots more in areas like themes, H5P, JS charts, Behat tests, administration, forms library...

One at a time:

This (non-regular) section in the integration posts aims to get various policy issues communicated and, with your collaboration, decided and applied in an organised way.

• MDLSITE-6096, also known as "One external function per class and per file under component\external namespace" has been finally agreed and is now in effect. Note that doesn't imply that we need to "convert/move" all current external functions from the "old" externallib.php to the new, namespaced location under classes and there may be cases where it makes sense, for consistency to continue using the old location (this applies to all policy issues in general). Still, for new cases... the new rules must be always considered.
• MDLSITE-6105 is the next policy issue proposed, about how to use the @link and @see tags in PHPDocs. Hopefully it won't be much controversial, logic sense (developers around?) should apply.
• Finally, and about the voting system for those policy issues, note that, from now on, ⅔ (two thirds) will be required to accept any change. That implies that any issue facing ⅓ (one third) or more opposition won’t be accepted (unless clarified, amended and voted again, ideally in another issue). Towards clear, consistent, conservative and non-controversial agreements.

Warm thanks:

• To the NINE number. Because I want.

A stitch in time...