[Sukhendu2002]

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/30854

What is this PR about?

This PR makes wp_insert_post() save an initial revision when inserting a post whose post type supports revisions.

Current trunk only saves revisions when an existing post is updated. A post inserted directly in its final state therefore has no revision containing its original content.

Backwards compatibility

Existing function calls remain compatible because the new revision-author parameters are optional.

This intentionally changes revision counts for programmatically inserted revision-supported posts. Such posts now begin with one revision instead of zero.

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): pi coding agent
Model(s): GPT-5.6
Used for: Investigating the revision flow, initial code skeleton, code review. Final implementation and tests were reviewed and edited by me.

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[apermo]

Having worked with revisisions in late 2024, I am pretty sure that an initial revision is already created when a post is created.

Did you verify the reported bug is still valid, before creating the fix?

[Sukhendu2002]

Yes, I re-verified against current origin/trunk. For the direct wp_insert_post() path covered by this ticket, trunk still creates 0 revisions on insert because wp_save_post_revision_on_insert() returns early when $update is false. I confirmed with a temporary PHPUnit test.

The behavior you remember may be from editor flows that create an auto-draft and then update it; that update does create a revision. This patch targets the bare insert path where a post is inserted in one call.

[apermo]

That does make sense, thank you for pointing that out.

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Props sukhendu2002, adamsilverstein, apermo.

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[adamsilverstein]

Closing #1336 in favor of this PR.

@Sukhendu2002 I'll resolve the merge conflicts then give this a review. Thanks for your work here.

[adamsilverstein]

Claude suggested these two changes which I'll go ahead and push sicne they are small:

1. The new author parameter can break existing hooks. The PR adds a second parameter, $revision_author, to the public wp_save_post_revision(). Any code that hooks that function with more than one argument, like add_action( 'save_post', 'wp_save_post_revision', 10, 2 ), would now pass a WP_Post object in as the author. PHP turns that into user ID 1 and raises a warning, so revisions get the wrong author. The review suggests leaving the public signature alone: when a post has no revisions yet and there's no logged-in user, use the post's author inside wp_save_post_revision().

do we need this new parameter? I'll remove for now, let me know if I am missing something.

3. Wrong @SInCE version. It says 7.1.0, but trunk is 7.2-beta4, so it should be 7.3.0.

7.3.0 is right.

[adamsilverstein]

Thanks for picking this up @Sukhendu2002, this is a much more complete approach than my old #1336, which I've closed in favor of this one. Moving the fix into wp_save_post_revision_on_insert() so it covers every status is the right call, and it's great to see the custom_css workaround finally go.

I pushed a few commits to get this moving again, hope that's ok.

Claude worked through the review and the follow-up commits with me, summary below:

Trunk merge (318ffe4). The branch conflicted in the REST revisions tests set_up(). Trunk dropped the untyped $revisions property, so the initial-revision fixtures were kept without it. The two global post tests added on trunk since (test_get_items_restores_global_post and test_get_items_without_global_post_leaves_it_unset) now expect the initial revision too.

wp_save_post_revision() signature (5746b52). The new $revision_author parameter on a public function that is often hooked directly was risky: a callback registered with more than one accepted arg, eg. add_action( 'save_post', 'wp_save_post_revision', 10, 2 ), would pass a WP_Post in as the author, and absint() turns that into user 1. The public signature is back to ( $post_id ), and the author is picked inside the function instead: with no current user and no existing revisions, the first revision goes to the post author. The private _wp_put_post_revision() keeps its new third param. One side effect worth noting: that also applies to a first revision saved on update without a current user (eg. a cron edit of an imported post), which used to get author 0.

@since is now 7.3.0, since trunk is 7.2-beta4.

New trunk tests (afc3413). The revision meta tests from #66329 read the oldest revision expecting the one saved by the first update, which is now the second oldest. The helper was renamed to get_first_update_revision_id().

The full PHPUnit suite passes locally with these changes.

Still open from the review, for discussion rather than blockers:

• Opting out. The only way to skip the initial revision is removing wp_save_post_revision from post_updated, which also turns off revisions on update. On the ticket, @peterwilsoncc and @TimothyBJacobs floated a register_post_status() property; a simple filter in wp_save_post_revision_on_insert() might be enough. Worth adding?
• Extra writes. Every programmatic insert of a type that supports revisions now writes a second row (importers, wp_global_styles, wp_template, wp_navigation, wp_block, custom_css). Seems like the right trade-off, but it belongs in the dev note along with the revision count change for REST and XML-RPC consumers.
• Nit: in test_wp_save_post_revision_with_array_post_meta, the remove_action() / add_action() pair isn't wrapped in try/finally like the other tests here.

What do you think about the opt-out question?