CloudFest Hackathon overview issue

[adamziel]

This issue lists ideas relevant to the In-browser WordPress development environment project that will be pursued at CloudFest Hackaton 2023.

Most relevant:

• Extend towards full dev environment #104
• Xterm.js support #120
• A minimal runeditable code embed #17
• Network access in the browser #85
• Persist filesystem changes after page refresh #19
• Setup JavaScript code linters #14 (pre-work)

Less relevant:

• Pass WordPress unit tests #111 – Most tests are passing, but there's ~250 skipped and failed ones.
• [UI] PHP Version Switcher #90 – You can already switch PHP and WP versions, but there's no UI for that.
• Export and Import Playground instance #88 – @artemiomorales is exploring it right now, so we'll likely be able to build on top of it.

Let's use it to coordinate any ideas, required pre-work, and the project itself.

cc @schlessera @swissspidy @gziolo @danielbachhuber

[danielbachhuber]

Thanks for putting together these issues, @adamziel !

I haven't touched the codebase at all, so I'll spend some time with it in the next couple of weeks and report my findings on the various issues.

[gziolo]

That's a solid list of tasks to hack on 🔥

I'm wondering why you included #14 (setup code linters in the repo) on the most relevant list. It doesn't seem to be something that would appeal to folks watching the demo at the end of hackathon 😄

[adamziel]

@gziolo that particular one I meant more as a pre-work – I'd love folk to clone the repo and have the linter already there, I remember it took us a while to get there last year.

[gziolo]

There is another exciting idea we could attack. I know @adamziel started exploring possibilities for using WordPress Playground for testing pull requests from the Gutenberg repository. At the moment a different solution exists gutenberg.run available at http://gutenberg.run that uses a much more complex stack that could be replaced with WordPress Playground that only needs a copy of the plugin with changes applied in PR that is prepared for usage in the browser.

Finally, it could become a general-purpose solution for any WordPress plugin or theme, as outlined by @fabiankaegy in https://github.com/fabiankaegy/wp-wasm-deploy-preview-example.

[adamziel]

I got Proof of Concept of the Gutenberg previewer to work in #126

• Gutenberg PR 47739
• Live Preview: https://wasm.wordpress.net/wordpress.html?gutenberg-pr=47739&url=/wp-admin/plugins.php?test=test (the PR number may be changed)

The biggest technical limitation is the incomplete SQLite support.

What we could explore in Rust:

• Show the PR code in a code editor, allow reviewing inline and fixing small bugs with real git commits
• Preview WordPress Pull Requests, not just Gutenberg Pull Requests
• Attach a test database to the PR and have the Playground automatically load it
• Add UI controls to switch WordPress and PHP versions – it's already possible via query parameters (?wp=6.0, ?php=7.3)

[danielbachhuber]

Here's a classic WP-CLI contributor workflow gap I'd love to see solved (wp-cli/i18n-command#351 (comment))

Essentially, the contributor was able to grok the codebase well enough to submit their change, but including tests has the appearance of being too daunting.

It would be really cool if WordPress Playground could provide them an environment and user experience for adding the tests:

1. Click 'Launch WordPress Playground' button.
2. Two-pane window opens with a code editor on the left and CLI on the right.
3. It's possible to make changes to the repository files on the left, and then run composer behat in the CLI.

[adamziel]

@danielbachhuber I don't see any technical blockers 🎉 putting these pieces together will take work, but technically everything is already supported.

[adamziel]

Closing this since the Hackaton is now over. Thank you everyone!