New Proposal Calls for Contributors to Stop Merging Experimental APIs from Gutenberg to WordPress Core
The practice of merging experimental APIs from Gutenberg into WordPress core may soon be coming to an end. A new proposal, published by Automattic-sponsored contributor Adam Zielinski, calls for contributors to stabilize APIs before merging them into core. Over the years, approximately 280 experimental APIs have been merged from the Gutenberg plugin, which Zielinski audited in a ticket he opened for the issue in April. In balancing the drive to move fast with iterating on the editor(s) against WordPress’ commitment to backwards compatibility, the number of experimental APIs has become untenable and the practice of merging them into core is now being actively reconsidered. Officially, the experimental APIs are flagged as such to discourage third-party use, since they are expected to change. In practice, people building for the block editor are using them anyway because they are in core and they want to extend the features these APIs enable. “Plugin and theme authors are forced to rely on the __experimental features that could get removed or changed in a backwards incompatible way at any time,” Zielinski said, echoing the frustration and concerns many developers have had with the project the past few years. “It is a serious maintenance burden. Every new…
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