[TASK] first attempt to reduce NPM need bu using the Core nightly bui…

[ramonfincken]

first attempt to reduce NPM need bu using the Core nightly build as source of truth for CSS and JS files

[desrosj]

Perhaps I'm missing something. But why can't the test runner just use the https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress repository instead of the nightly?

Using the nightly loses a level of fidelity because you can't control which commit is tested. But the WordPress SVN repository is updated by the build server after every commit to wordpress-develop and mirrored here to GitHub.

The only challenge there is a search would need to be performed to find the corresponding changeset.

[ramonfincken]

The point is to copy the nightly JS/CSs files, not the PHP ones.

But hold on, i will try using another path.

[ramonfincken]

Thanks for your talk at WordCamp by the way :)

[ekamran]

Picking this up, thanks Ramon for the first attempt.

The original direction here still makes sense, but the implementation needs a different shape now. #246 still runs npm install, patches core's Gruntfile, downloads the nightly, and copies built assets into build/. With #351, the runner's test build path is moving to build:dev, so the files the tests need live under src/ instead.

The alternative desrosj suggested looks viable: the WordPress/WordPress built mirror carries the exact develop revision in each commit message (Built from https://develop.svn.wordpress.org/trunk@NNNNN). I verified the current trunk revision maps to the mirror about a minute later, and the mirror contains the built files that wordpress-develop ignores under src/, including wp-includes/js/dist, jQuery, block CSS/JS, wp-admin/js, and CSS dist files.

Plan: a new opt-in WPT_ASSETS_SOURCE=mirror path that finds the mirror commit for the checked-out develop revision, downloads that built tree, copies the ignored asset paths into src/, runs sentinel checks, and falls back to the normal npm build:dev path if the mirror commit or required files are not available. Default behavior stays npm.

I will push the new approach to this PR, with a same-revision comparison of the npm route and the mirror route.

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