[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #57548: Stop concatenating scripts and stylesheets in wp-admin and retire load-scripts.php and load-styles.php

[WordPress Trac]

#57548: Stop concatenating scripts and stylesheets in wp-admin and retire load-
scripts.php and load-styles.php
---------------------------+-----------------------------
 Reporter:  azaozz         |       Owner:  westonruter
     Type:  enhancement    |      Status:  accepted
 Priority:  normal         |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Script Loader  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal         |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                 |     Focuses:  performance
---------------------------+-----------------------------

Comment (by jerclarke):

 Coming in from #64087 as the ghost of WordPress past.

 Here's a good reason to get rid of this system: It's riddled with PHP
 warnings that have been intentionally suppressed.

 At the top of `load-styles.php` and `load-scripts.php` is the following
 code:

 {{{
 /*
  * The error_reporting() function can be disabled in php.ini. On systems
 where that is the case,
  * it's best to add a dummy function to the wp-config.php file, but as
 this call to the function
  * is run prior to wp-config.php loading, it is wrapped in a
 function_exists() check.
  */
 if ( function_exists( 'error_reporting' ) ) {
         /*
          * Disable error reporting.
          *
          * Set this to error_reporting( -1 ) for debugging.
          */
         error_reporting( 0 );
 }
 }}}

 It's there because without it, any call to `load-styles.php` will generate
 multiple warnings, especially because the `noop.php` zeroes out all
 filters to return `null`, which triggers PHP8 warnings for things like
 `file_exists()` that don't accept `null`. Thanks to @westonruter for
 helping me figure that part out.

 I stumbled on to this weird detail because on our live server we have an
 alternate error handler that doesn't respect `error_reporting()` and
 effectively always runs in `E_ALL`, so the warnings were being triggered
 after we updated to PHP 8.

 As I said in the other ticket, the particular warnings I noticed don't
 even seem worth fixing, because the whole system assumes there are
 warnings/errors and intentionally ignores them.

 If there's no great argument to keep this system, I vote to nuke it from
 space. I've been running in `define( 'CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false );` mode
 for months now and it works fine and resolves all the warnings.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57548#comment:21>
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