Retraceur 4.0.0-RC1

Last Saturday, the release of Retraceur 4.0.0-beta3 led me to postpone the stable release by a few days in order to validate the final fixes identified while documenting the new Discovery and Update APIs.

Those extra days have confirmed that these fixes, along with the latest refinements made to the administration interface, are working as intended.

Retraceur 4.0.0-RC1 now marks the end of development for this major release. Unless a critical issue is discovered, this Release Candidate will become the stable release of Retraceur 4.0.0 tomorrow.

Retraceur 4.0.0-RC1 also marks the completion of a journey that began several months ago. Before publishing the stable release, I’d like to take this final opportunity to look back at a much less visible aspect of the project — one that, in my opinion, defines Retraceur 4.0.0 more than any individual feature.

Porting also means making choices

Between March 5 and July 17, I reviewed every change introduced in WordPress^® 7.0 to determine which ones truly belonged in Retraceur.

In total, 374 commits were selected, adapted, and integrated. This work isn’t about copying every change from the upstream project. Every change is evaluated by asking one simple question:

Does this change contribute to Retraceur’s vision?

In other words, does it genuinely improve software whose ambition is to help everyone build and maintain their own individual web presence?

The answer isn’t always yes. And that’s precisely where a fork begins to forge its own identity.

An even leaner core, an even more open crossroads

The flagship feature of Retraceur 4.0.0 is undoubtedly the introduction of an open crossroads for discovering and updating plugins and blocks.

But this isn’t simply another feature. It also changes the way I think about developing the software’s core. Now that new capabilities can easily be added through distributed resources, Retraceur’s core can remain focused on what truly matters.

My goal is to keep the core coherent, sustainable, and as lean and lightweight as possible, while allowing the open crossroads to support more specialized use cases. To me, this approach better respects users’ freedom: the core provides the common foundation, while more specialized capabilities can be installed… or not.

Choices that reflect this vision

The AI features introduced in WordPress^® 7.0 perfectly illustrate this new approach: I chose not to integrate them into Retraceur’s core — not because I’m opposed to artificial intelligence, but because I don’t believe this kind of functionality should be imposed on every user.

Thanks to the open crossroads introduced in Retraceur 4.0.0, these capabilities can naturally be delivered as freely developed extensions, leaving everyone free to decide whether they want to use them.

The same reasoning led me not to adopt the work around the Real-Time Collaboration API. Even though this feature was ultimately removed from WordPress^® 7.0 before its release, I had already made that decision independently.

Retraceur is designed to support individual web presence. Its ambition is not to become a collaborative writing environment comparable to tools built for teams. And once again, nothing prevents a third-party project from exploring that direction through an extension should such a need arise.

None of these decisions diminish the remarkable work carried out by the WordPress^® contributors. They simply reflect a different vision and a different understanding of what belongs in the software’s core.

A content and site editor tailored for Retraceur

Retraceur naturally continues to build upon the excellent work done around the modern editor.

The editor included in Retraceur 4.0.0 is based on the wp/7.0 branch of the Gutenberg project. A number of project-specific adaptations have been applied to ensure that it remains consistent with the architectural choices made for Retraceur’s core.

The goal isn’t to create an alternative editor, but to provide a modern, well-maintained, future-oriented editing experience while remaining true to Retraceur’s purpose.

See you tomorrow!

This Release Candidate marks the end of Retraceur 4.0.0 development. Unless a critical issue is discovered in the coming hours, it will become tomorrow’s stable release.

Once again, thank you to everyone who has followed the progress of this new version, tested the beta releases (and who will put RC1 through its paces at turbo speed!), reported issues, or simply taken an interest in the project.

Featured photo credits Gael Varoquaux CC BY 2.0

Note: The WordPress^® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation. The use of the WordPress^® name in this article is for identification purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the WordPress Foundation.