All but 2 test reporters stopped reporting January 5th 2026

[kittenkamala]

As of January 5th, 2026 around 11am PST actively reporting test reporters dropped down to 3. One of those only reported 1 time since the 5th. Prior to that, from January 1-5th there were 18 active reporters. https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results/

Kyle Mott originally reported this in the #hosting Slack channel on January 12th: Slack thread The error reported on his end is:

[ ... ] Environment variables pass checks. cd '/var/www/wordpress' && php ./vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit --dont-report-useless-tests PHP version: 8.4.16 (/usr/local/bin/php) PHP Warning: require(/var/www/wordpress/src/wp-includes/build/routes.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/wordpress/src/wp-settings.php on line 245 PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Failed opening required '/var/www/wordpress/src/wp-includes/build/routes.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /var/www/wordpress/src/wp-settings.php:245 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/wordpress/tests/phpunit/includes/install.php(40): require_once() #1 {main} thrown in /var/www/wordpress/src/wp-settings.php on line 245 Error: Failed to perform operation.

Kyle identified this commit to the wordpress-develop repo as a possible cause.

I gathered some reporting data and confirmed that on January 5th around 11am PST reporting from 15 active reporters stopped. The "All test results 01/01 -01/12/26" tab in this spreadsheet of test reporting data (compiled on the 12th) shows that the ticket for that commit was closed around 11 am PST, which is when the drop off in reporting started. I attached a screenshot of the sheet that illustrates the moment reporting fell off.

The Hosting Team has asked for hosts to check for errors in their runner configs. Any additional reports will be added as comments or sub-issues to this one. With confirmation from hosts a Trac ticket can be opened, or there may be changes in the runner that can be made to resolve this.

Folks are encouraged to try to reproduce the error on their own containers or hosting systems! Thank you for your help!

[kittenkamala]

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64393 Definitely not an issue w the test runner

[kittenkamala]

the gutenberg-copy task during build seems to be setting the target directory for routes. to 'build'

Output from prepare.php:

Running "gutenberg-copy" task 🔍 Checking Gutenberg build... Build target: build/ ✅ Gutenberg build found 📦 Copying PHP infrastructure... ✅ routes.php ✅ pages.php 📁 Copying pages/... ✅ pages/ copied 📁 Copying routes/... ✅ routes/ copied

This is Gutenberg copy task function code:
https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/a8924f58aa038fcb892b55fd31d37aeac65c34e5/Gruntfile.js#L1449

const buildDir = grunt.option( 'dev' ) ? 'src' : 'build';

If buildDir is equal to (check if 'dev' is true or false) if true buildDIr should be 'src' else buildDir is 'build'

It looks like grunt.option('dev') is returning false, so it's using 'build' instead of 'src'.

phpunit tests are expecting /src

https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/d015d16c1f165588efb481aa9b51675bac02264a/tests/phpunit/includes/bootstrap.php#L41

if ( defined( 'WP_RUN_CORE_TESTS' ) && WP_RUN_CORE_TESTS && ! is_dir( ABSPATH ) ) { if ( substr( ABSPATH, -7 ) !== '/build/' ) { printf( 'Error: The ABSPATH constant in the wp-tests-config.phpfile is set to a non-existent path "%s". Please verify.' . PHP_EOL, ABSPATH ); exit( 1 ); } else { echo 'Error: The PHPUnit tests should be run on the /src/ directory, not the /build/ directory.' . ' Please update the ABSPATH constant in yourwp-tests-config.phpfile todirname( FILE ) . '/src/'' . ' or run npm run build prior to running PHPUnit.' . PHP_EOL; exit( 1 ); } }