TYPO3 Release Improvements & v8 Maintenance Release Schedule

TYPO3 v8 LTS receives a plannable release schedule for upcoming maintenance releases, as we organized with TYPO3 v7 already. This makes it transparent and plannable for everybody in the TYPO3 Community to know when to expect a next bugfix and maintenance release. As for the regular maintenance releases we have planned the following release schedule:

Please note, that if an urgent issue pops up, we will release without prior notice if necessary.

Security releases that will affect all supported versions, which includes the v7 series (until November 2018), the v8 series (supported until April 2020) and v9 / master branch, will be released at the same time on all versions (v9, v8 and v7).

Starting today, the following changes apply for future TYPO3 Core releases:

Git: Naming scheme for new tags and branches

The branches for previous TYPO3 releases were prefixed with “TYPO3_”. We will omit that prefix for new release branches. The 9.0 development branch will for example be just named “9.0”. Master stays bleeding edge.

As we are in development of v9.0.0, no new branches will be added to TYPO3 v8.

New tags are created with a prefixed “v”, as in “v9.0.0”, previously the tags were named “8.7.2” and “TYPO3_8-7-2”. Bugfix releases in TYPO3 v7 LTS and TYPO3 v8 LTS will have three tags “TYPO3_8-7-2”, “v8.7.2” and “8.7.2” to ensure compatibility with automation scripts.

New tags are signed via GPG by the responsible release manager (either Oliver Hader or me).

Old tags/version schemes are kept as they are.

Download files / tarballs

All files are now stored on Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and served via CDN, and all files previously located on sourceforge.net have been copied to Microsoft Azure.

When using the get.typo3.org API for fetching any release files, Microsoft Azure Blob storage is used under the hood.

Checksums

Checksums are only calculated in SHA256, no MD5 checksums are generated anymore.

A new README.md file comes with each package and is signed via GPG by the release manager (either Oliver Hader or me) and also contains the ChangeLog. The previous RELEASE.txt is not generated anymore.

The relevant README.md file can be found on typo3.org/download starting with the next release.

Additional Information

All existing files on sourceforge.net will continue to exist for some while, but it is discouraged to use SourceForge for downloading TYPO3 Core packages.

The relevant source code for releasing, packaging and publishing TYPO3 can be found here: https://github.com/bmack/typo3-darth

The relevant source code for subtree splitting on each commit into separate repositories can be found here: https://github.com/lolli42/typo3-core-splitter

The previous PHP code based on Phing for releasing TYPO3 on git.typo3.org will be removed in the next few weeks.

Some people already asked for a TYPO3 v9 roadmap - it will be published soon, but we’re still busy with further details on the release planning which does not affect new features directly, but will make life easier:

Revamped get.typo3.org

The download portal get.typo3.org will include details currently found on https://wiki.typo3.org for a release, making wiki.typo3.org obsolete for release information of new versions. Additionally information like minimum system requirements and supported infrastructure per version will be added. Perspectively the current sites typo3.org/download and composer.typo3.org could directly point to get.typo3.org to have one single place for getting TYPO3.

TYPO3 System Extension as standalone packages ("subtree split")

We’ve put a new trigger after each merge in the TYPO3 main repository in place, that publishes all affected changes to single read-only repositories on github.com (see https://github.com/TYPO3-CMS).

Shortly after a release, these git repositories are also tagged with the commit and the tags are also signed by the release manager (either Oliver Hader or me). Tagging will start with TYPO3 v9.0.0.

Starting with TYPO3 v9.0, each system extension can be installed separately (not activated yet) via composer using “typo3/cms-{extension-name}” as in “typo3/cms-feedit”. Please note that this is not possible for current stable versions.

Thanks go to Fabien Potencier (@fabpot) so we could include split.sh (written in Go) to manage such a fast subtree splitting functionality.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me, Benni Mack (Twitter @bennimack, Slack "benni"), as the TYPO3 Technical Lead, directly or leave a comment below.