release.yml build broken since 2023 (gitinfo), fixed on chore/deps-prune; merge the Node 24 branches or archive

[dickhardt]

release.yml has been broken since 2023. Gruntfile.js kept a gitinfo config block and gitinfo in the build and release task chains after grunt-gitinfo was removed in b8f8e0c (2023-04-07). npm run build and npm run release abort with Task "gitinfo" not found, so release.yml has been non-functional since before 1.5.4 (2023-11-13). Were the 1.5.x releases pushed to wordpress.org by hand? Fixed on chore/deps-prune (db5f2c8): the references are gone, nothing read the gitinfo output, and npx grunt release --force now runs checkrepo → checktextdomain → clean → copy and produces dist/.

Branches waiting: chore/node24 (cbdc61f: .nvmrc 14 → 24, release.yml 14.x → 24.x, devcontainer NODE_VERSION 12 → 24, engines), chore/deps-latest (6a1475c: @wordpress/scripts 26 → 34, @wordpress/env 7 → 11, playwright 1.63, force-resolutions preinstall removed), chore/deps-prune (db5f2c8: dev-require, node, npm, puppeteer, typescript, check-node-version removed; gitinfo fix).

The plugin is slated for deprecation. Decide: merge the three branches so CI and release work until then, or archive the repo and drop them.

Other breakage noted, not fixed: lint:php, lint:php:fix, analyze:php, setup:composer, composer scripts call docker-compose run composer and there is no docker-compose.yml in the repo; composer.lock is stale (composer install in composer:2.2 refuses it); the wp-env block in package.json references a nonexistent docker-compose.wp-env.yml; @wordpress/scripts is ~1300 packages (48 audit findings) for check:engines and check:licenses, neither run in CI; engines is an exact pin (24.16.0 / 11.13.0) that check:engines will fail on as soon as a newer 24.x ships.

Found during the Node 24 / dependency upgrade, 2026-09-06 (see chore/deps-prune branch)