plugins – Dev Notes

(Newer post December 2025)

First run svn up to update the local copy.

Make changes to the files in /trunk. The WordPress readme.txt will probably refer to a stable release version (e.g. 1.2.2).

Changing ONLY trunk is not enough, you also need to commit the changes to the stable version.

Update Readme without tagging new version

(I think. Last time I did tag a new release)

If you are doing a readme.txt change only (not code) you can update the existing tag. For example to bump the “tested up to” version you DON’T need to tag a new version and release an update.

svn add trunk/* --force to add the changes made for /trunk

svn commit -m "Tested up to whatever"

Committing new code & tagging a release

Make code changes to /trunk, same as when you are not tagging.

Run svn add trunk/* --force (same as above)

svn cp trunk tags/1.2.3 to copy trunk to a new release (where 1.2.3 is the new intended release)

svn ci -m "My commit message"

Not so good. I think this post is more correct:

You may update without changing the code. This happens when I test a plugin with a new version of WordPress and don’t need to make any code changes.

Update the readme.txt with new info, then:

svn ci -m "My cool message"

This is the same command to push new changes that do involve updated code.

If SVN is unauthenticated use your wordpress.org account username (which is not the email address) and password. For me that is mikehealy.