Give plugin authors an easy way to run plugin-check on their pending submitted plugins

[tellyworth]

After submitting a plugin, we should make it easy for plugin authors to run plugin-check and view the results.

One way to do this would be to provide a link to Playground, and run PCP there for them.

Proposal: add a link or button on the plugin submission screen that does exactly that.

[tellyworth]

Here's an example of what I mean. The "Run plugin check" link would open a new Playground window, with the user's plugin installed, and a copy of PCP installed and active.

[tellyworth]

The screen could include some text encouraging the author to review the plugin check results. Perhaps something like:

Please review the Plugin Check results for your plugin, and fix any significant problems. This will help streamline the preview process and reduce delays by ensuring your plugin already meets the required standards when the plugin review team examines it.

[foosantos]

Thanks, @tellyworth! It is a great idea. We could add this for sure before the team works to have this check automatically as part of the review process.

For now, as a temporary solution, can we maybe do that before they apply and add a simple check box just saying something like, "I checked my plugin with the "Plugin Check."?

I believe it would be a similar complexity to implement it this way instead, right?

[dd32]

Replying to foosantos:

For now, as a temporary solution, can we maybe do that before they apply and add a simple check box just saying something like, "I checked my plugin with the "Plugin Check."?

See #7172 for that.

[dd32]

Example of 7405.diff

[dufresnesteven]

Can we do the following:

• Communicate that the plugin is in the queue
• Run the theme check
• Alerts users of errors
• Communicate that plugins with errors typically take X times longer to be approved
• Communicate that they can fix the errors and not affect their place in the queue.

[Edit]
Ultimately, I think error-less plugins should make it to a priority queue but that probably falls out of the scope of this ticket.

[tellyworth]

Those are excellent suggestions Steve. We can do the three "Communicate" ones easily in this patch just by adding some extra messaging. I'll tweak Dion's patch with some draft text.

Alerting the user to actual errors would require separate work to integrate PCP on the server side; that's in progress independently (see ​https://make.wordpress.org/pluginrepo/2024/01/08/plugin-check-next-steps/).

[tellyworth]

In 13150:

Plugin Directory: fix issue in moderator blueprints

Fixes a bug where the oldest helper plugin was used when plugin mods are reviewing a plugin, not the newest.

See #7405.

[tellyworth]

In 13179:

Plugin Directory: Add Plugin Check buttons on author pending page.

See #7405.

[tellyworth]

In 13211:

Plugin Directory: fewer Plugin Check buttons

On the plugin upload pending screen, only show the Plugin Check button for the most recent version of the plugin. This should eliminate confusion about which button to click.

See #7405.

[dd32]

In 13352:

Plugin Directory: Upload: Add a callout to the Plugin Check plugin, to encourage plugin authors to test with it prior to submission.

See #7405.

[dd32]

Could [13352] be enhanced with a run interactively now link @tellyworth?

Perhaps it could just load up the requisite things and land on the wp-admin/plugin-upload.php screen? (I'm assuming it wouldn't be possible to inherit from the file upload pre-submission)

[tellyworth]

Replying to dd32:

(I'm assuming it wouldn't be possible to inherit from the file upload pre-submission)

Yeah I think it'd have to be a post-upload step.

I think it would be better to spend the effort on running plugin-check server-side during the upload process.

[dd32]

I think this is implemented.

I think it would be better to spend the effort on running plugin-check server-side during the upload process.

This is tracked in #7556

[dd32]

In 14078:

Plugin Directory: Plugin check on upload: When running plugin check against an uploaded ZIP file, attempt to force the plugin to be installed into the expected folder path.

This resolves issues of plugin check suggesting that the textdomain should be 2024_09_25-uploaded-file-SLUG rather than SLUG.

This is intended on being temporary until the upstream issue is resolved.

See #7405.
See ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/issues/1802.