Karsten Nowak
As usual, everyone was punctual and motivated. Understandable, because working in the Best Practices Team is definitely more enjoyable than regular work. You always learn something new, and it’s just fun.
Getting Started: Smarter Testing Decisions
The day got off to a good start. During our kick-off meeting, we made an important decision straight away: to only run our functional tests with the lowest and highest PHP versions for incoming pull requests. This change saves a lot of time and resources that would otherwise be spent on running the tests. Since the Tea example (tea) extension serves as a template for other extension developers, reducing redundant test runs across many projects could result in significant overall resource savings.
To ensure that we still catch all theoretically possible cases with errors, we want to move the full test matrix — all TYPO3 and PHP version combinations between 8.1 and 8.5 (currently supported by the tea extension) — to a weekly run. In our view, this is completely sufficient to catch the low probability of errors occurring. Everyone agreed with this solution, and we were then able to move on quickly to our regular sprint tasks.
Sprint Work and Small Victories
As always, we had a project board for the sprint, which was prepared by Oli and Daniel. Of course, there were still some unfinished tickets from the last sprint - mine included! So it was especially satisfying to close that one quickly and see the changes merged. With that single ticket done, the day was already a success for me. Closed tickets are always very visible steps forward.
The Team Behind the Sprint
Speaking of progress, we (Eike, Felix, and myself) have been participating in these remote sprints for quite some time now. Of course, Oli, Daniel, Bernd and Łukasz are also involved. Not always all together, but that's not always possible.
If you’ve never joined before, just drop in and give it a try! No one will be upset if you can’t attend every sprint—it’s all very relaxed and informal.
Of course, it definitely helps if your employer supports you, as mine does (thanks, undkonsorten), allowing me to participate during working hours. In the end, everyone benefits: you, your employer, and the TYPO3 community as a whole.
By the Numbers
For those of you who have managed to read this far (I hope there are a few), I have a few figures to present.
At the end of the remote code sprint, we had 15 closed tickets. In the process:
- 43 lines of code were added
- 184 lines were deleted
- For a total of 227 code changes
Save the Date: On-Location Sprint 2026
If you’ve read this far (and I hope a few of you have!), here’s a final bit of news:
Next year, there will be an on-location sprint in Bonn, from 26 to 28 March 2026 (Thursday through Saturday).
It’s still a while away, but you can already start planning if you’d like to attend. Travel and accommodation costs can usually be reimbursed from the Best Practices Team's budget, so participation is affordable.
See You Next Time!
The next Remote Code Sprint for the Best Practices Team will take place on 1 December 2026, starting as always at 11:00 CET.
Have a successful day, and see you there!
Felicity Brand
Mathias Bolt Lesniak