TYPO3 CMS
After last week's release of TYPO3 CMS 6.2 Alpha 3, the release team got into a <link http: wiki.typo3.org t3cms_code_sprint_2013_hannover>feature freeze sprint preceding the first beta release on October 15. More on that in the code sprint section.TYPO3 Neos
Neos release manager, Sebastian Kurfürst, gives an <link http: forum.typo3.org index.php t>update about the Neos beta1 release on forum.typo3.org in a neat list mentioning all todo's, merged items, under review and in progress. The next Alpha release is planned for this coming Tuesday. The Neos Beta1 release date will be announced at the TYPO3 conference.TYPO3 Association Elections
Until the end of this year you can nominate yourself for a position in the Board, the Expert Advisory Board or the Business Control Committee, all of which are bodies of the TYPO3 Association. The TYPO3 Association website explains <link http: association.typo3.org how-it-works>how the TYPO3 Association works. In short the TYPO3 Association fosters development of TYPO3, organises events, supports the adoption of international software standards, takes care of education and certification and communicates with it's members and the general public. Voting happens in the second half of January of 2014.Bitnami package
When I met BitRock EO Erica Brescia at OSCON this July it was far from certain we would have a Bitnami package for TYPO3 anywhere soon. Some lobby-ing in that direction and all the votes TYPO3 got clearly made a lot of difference and BitNami now provides a TYPO3 Stack with a one-click install solution for TYPO3.
Download <link http: bitnami.com stack typo3 installer>installers and <link http: bitnami.com stack typo3 virtual-machine>virtual machines or run your own TYPO3 server <link http: bitnami.com stack typo3 cloud>in the cloud.
Themes and backend layouts
In a unique community cooperation Joey Hasenau and Kay Strobach teamed up at the last TYPO3 Developer Days and give an overview of their work in <link http: typo3.org news article themes-powered-by-gridelements-and-fluidcontent>THEMES powered by Gridelements and Fluidcontent on typo3.org. The article got quite some feedback that is definitely an interesting read. Not in the least, because the nameless coder Claus Due points out that “there's another member of the Fluid TYPO3 family that offers file-based backend layouts”, namely Fluidpages. Claus notes that “Fluidpages will also be made to support the new backend layout provision strategy that's currently being reviewed.”.Code Sprints
The TYPO3 community is unstoppable in it's coding desire with two code sprints this week.Editorial sprint
Between the 10th and 12th of October the first typo3.org Editorial Sprint took place at the <link http: www.web-vision.de>web-vision Office in Moenchengladbach, Germany.
The sprint was attended by Daniel Siepman, Christian Händel, Guido Haase, Matthias Schreiber, Roland Schenke and Boris Hinzer. Via a permanent remote connection to the United Kingdom Den Denyer attended as a rock solid one man task force for proofreading and corrections.
Boris mentions about the sprint: “As speaking for the whole team, we think the sprint was a huge success and we are very confident that the new concept of typo3.org will work out really soon. We are all very honored to be part of this great TYPO3 community.”
The goal of the sprint was to implement the main points of the new typo3.org Content Concept:
Integration of the existing TYPO3 products in typo3.org
Rearranging content for the new About Pages covering the whole TYPO3 Universe
Logical revision and creation of new content and navigation
Integration of certification.typo3.org
Rework of existing content
Creation of a "target group" approach for business decision makers, users and developers in the context of the swimming lane concept
CMS sprint
In Hannover at the <link http: www.bitmotion.de>Bitmotion Offices the release team got togther for the TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS feature freeze code sprint. This will probably one of the last code sprints before the final release. I asked Ernesto Baschny some questions surrounding the sprint and the upcoming Long Term support release. Please, tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am co-owner a small agency in southern Germany called "cron IT GmbH". I was born in Brazil but live in Germany since 1996, where I came to study computer science. Since then I live here with my wife and two kids, Luara and Raphael. In my free time I like to play (or watch) soccer.
You have quite a career as release manager for TYPO3 CMS. What is the history on that?
Since 2004 I am part of the "TYPO3 Core Team", back then introducing accessibility in rendering of "Text with images" in the frontend (without tables). 2010 during the Developer Days I was asked to be the release manager for the upcoming version (4.5), which I accepted in a team with Steffen Kamper. During these Developer Days we also decided that this would be the first ever LTS (Long Term Support) Version of TYPO3. Three years later, in 2013 the team was looking for a release manager for the next LTS version, and occasionally I candidated and was chosen - no-one else dared to do it, as it seems.
You decided to take the release manager challenge for this LTS, because of your experience with 4.5 LTS. What has changed in the release process since then?
The 4.5 release was the last one where we still used the "old" infrastructure: Issue Tracker was Mantis, Versioning System was Subversion and the "Review Process" was done through the core mailing list and sending patches back and forth. We had no quality assurance team, no unit tests, and very little "tools" to assist our work. Now we have a much more modern infrastructure: Redmine as Issue Tracking, GIT Versioning system and Gerrit Review System. All of them were introduced right after the 4.5 release. We now also have a very strong focus on Quality, with Unit Testing, automated CI provided by Travis, Code Sniffer and other checks running automatically after every commit on Jenkins etc. The Team has a very different structure now and the tools for releasing are much more modern.
Despite all these changes, a lot of the "old spirit" is still there, as the "old release team", which still consist of much of the same people. And the main "tasks" remain the same: Keep motivation, provide information and communication, rise awareness around the new release, etc. Being a LTS release puts these tasks in a very special focus because the audience is much larger and avid for information.
What are the major differences between the coming LTS and the previous one?
One of the major differences is that this time the upgrade from the last LTS will be "breaking" for some upgraders. For 4.5 we used the opportunity for "keeping backwards compatibility" one last time, before starting removing long long deprecated functions and APIs. So we carried on features and APIs that had been there since very early ages. The breaking changes started with 4.6 and went on with 4.7, 6.0 and 6.1. So now we have a huge user base coming from 4.5 LTS to 6.2 LTS and for the first time they will suffer from some breaking changes. Thus one important task is to raise awareness and documentation of these changes (for example through the project "Smooth Migration" or the "Agency Sprint" we had in Essen). Despite that, we will still surprise a lot of people by how easy the upgrade in the end is. The main parts of TYPO3 are still working the same (i.e. we still have t3lib_div, there is still pibase etc). Most important extensions are already migrated to the "6.x" style, so they will work out of the box in 6.2 LTS. Plenty of very old extensions will also work with just tiny adjustments.
We will divert a bit from the release schedule as we are used to it. Can you shed a light on this and if we pick up on the regular release schedule after the release of TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS?
In September the team came to the conclusion that our goals for 6.2 were still realistic, but would require at least one more intensive Code Sprint to be really doable. We didn't want to rush anything for such an important release. So we decided to postpone the final release by one and a half months to give us sufficient time to finish things that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Just check out the release notes of alpha3 which is a result of this postponing to see what I mean.
About "life after the 6.2" release: The experience with 4.5 showed us that it's of no use to rush out a release right after the "LTS" version. 4.6 was not really so popular. So the current agreement is that we won't have any release during the first half of 2014, but a bigger release by the end of 2014 again (October), allowing this to be a bigger release with more fancy features and changes (even potentially a "7.0"). The exact plans for it will be set during the early 2014. So stay tuned!
TYPO3camps
End of this week the mini conference <link http: typo3camp.pl en>TYPO<link http: typo3camp.pl en>3<link http: typo3camp.pl en>camp<link http: typo3camp.pl en> <link http: typo3camp.pl en>Poland will start in Pozna?. It is a small event of around 40 attendees, but together with TYPO3 Eastern Europe (November 14-16) - <link http: www.t3ee.org>T<link http: www.t3ee.org>3<link http: www.t3ee.org>EE in Cluj Napoca, Romania this will be a good basis for future growth of the community in Eastern Europe. The next 'This Week in TYPO3' will come from Poland and will definitely feature news from the event.
There are two TYPO3camps upcoming in Germany. <link http: www.typo3camp-regensburg.de>TYPO<link http: www.typo3camp-regensburg.de>3<link http: www.typo3camp-regensburg.de>camp<link http: www.typo3camp-regensburg.de> <link http: www.typo3camp-regensburg.de>Regensburg from October 25 - 27 still has tickets, so you might hurry to get one before it is sold out. <link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de>TYPO<link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de>3<link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de>camp<link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de> <link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de>Rhein<link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de> <link http: www.typo3camp-rheinruhr.de>Ruhr in Essen from November 8 - 11 is sold out.