Refresh `install-wp-tests.sh` script

[swissspidy]

Feature Request

• Yes, I reviewed the contribution guidelines.

Describe your use case and the problem you are facing

This script hasn't really seen any major updates, because they haven't been necessary, but I think there's still some room for improvements.

Describe the solution you'd like

Some thoughts and ideas:

• I don't think we still need install the DB drop-in from https://github.com/markoheijnen/wp-mysqli (which just sets WP_USE_EXT_MYSQL to false) anymore.
• There is no good way to keep install-wp-tests.sh in sync with the version here. Developers miss out on important updates.
  Even just adding a link to this repo at the top of the file, maybe with a "Last updated" date, would be helpful
• Sometimes I had to add a User-Agent header to cURL requests as WordPress.org seemed to block requests otherwise.
  e.g. curl -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (K HTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36" -s "$1" > "$2";
• The script could have built-in MariaDB support, e.g. checking for mariadb-admin

[swissspidy]

Another thing that's annoying:

On macOS the files in the tmo wordpress and wordpress-tests-lib can get wiped sometimes, but the folders are still there. But because the script only checks if the folders exist and not the files, it won't recreate the setup.

To make that more robust, we can check if files like "$WP_TESTS_DIR"/includes/functions.php and "$WP_CORE_DIR"/wp-includs.php exist.

See swissspidy/performant-translations@108e443

[swissspidy]

GitHub Actions is upgrading to Ubuntu 24 and no longer installs SVN by default. See actions/runner-images#10636

Similarly, in the past Apple has removed Subversion from macOS (starting with 10.15 Catalina)

That means now many people will need to update their GitHub Actions workflows to install Subversion, or have to first install it on their computers.

Luckily WordPress source code can also be downloaded with Git, which is the preferred method for almost everyone. You only really need SVN if you need to commit to core). Thus, I suggest changing the script to use Git.

[GaryJones]

I came here to report the SVN -> Git thing, so I'm pleased to see it's already on someone else's radar.

I've also considered whether the integration testing of core or plugins could switch to npm—g install @wordpress/env and eliminate the need for the install-wp-tests.sh file. That may make CI and local testing more aligned.

[swissspidy]

wp-env is an unnecessary abstraction and requires Docker. Not something we should add to this script.

[davidperezgar]

I’d also add support for WooCommerce by preinstalling the plugin and making the necessary adjustments in other files.

[GaryJones]

wp-env is an unnecessary abstraction and requires Docker.

@swissspidy Can you please expand on this? Why is it an unnecessary abstraction? The bin/install-wp-tests.sh ultimately/typically requires some other local env to be used, right?

Beyond that educational question, has any work been started on refreshing the script, in a branch somewhere, that could be tested? I've got about 23 plugins that need the CI updating (to install SVN), so switching to a refreshed install script would be as much work.

[swissspidy]

No one has tackled this yet. There is #346 though. I just pushed #356, which is based on some changes I've used in other projects, followed by some untested changes addressing the items posted here (props Gemini CLI). PTAL.

As for wp-env, my main pain point is that it's using Docker, which hinders adoption and adds performance overhead. It's very opinionated and doesn't support things like object cache. You also can't run it with upcoming PHP versions ahead of time because there are no Docker images available yet.

This simple shell script on the other hand is super easy to set up with whatever PHP/MySQL combination already available on the system.

If someone wants to use wp-env for local development and unit testing, that's up to them, but personally I don't see us adding this to WP-CLI.

I’d also add support for WooCommerce by preinstalling the plugin and making the necessary adjustments in other files.

Yeah plugin dependencies currently require some work, especially when that plugin comes with its own test utils as well. Here's some inspiration involving GlotPress: https://github.com/wearerequired/traduttore/blob/4989685358ea55c1ce6c35c266e078c67e6d3e43/bin/install-wp-tests.sh

[swissspidy]

• There is no good way to keep install-wp-tests.sh in sync with the version here. Developers miss out on important updates.
  Even just adding a link to this repo at the top of the file, maybe with a "Last updated" date, would be helpful

What if we move the script to a custom WP-CLI command instead? 💡

[GaryJones]

Often my use case is that I only want the (freshest version of the) install-wp-tests.sh script, and not the rest of the files that get generated with the scaffold plugin tests command. So if that can be separated out to either generate a new file, or update an existing one (with suitable warnings about it being overwritten), then that would be useful.