[TYPO3-dev] RFC: Change roadmap for 4.5 and 5.0

[Dimitri Tarassenko]

Michael,

On 4/10/06, Michael Scharkow <mscharkow at gmx.net> wrote:

> So again: Continue the 4.x line with bug fixes only, and start TYPO3 5.0
> now, with some snapshots on the way, like the ZOPE people did with X3.

+1, absolutely.

If anyone told me that there will be no major releases after 4.0 for
1.5-2 years, but just maintenance and bugfixes, I would see this as an
ADVANTAGE. Just as I think having 2 year release cycles in RHEL is
something worth paying for versus getting Fedora Core updated every
half a year. And if that means breaking backwards compatibility in
some places, so be it.

PHP5 as a requirement does not rule out mass hosting as a platform
even now. With my current struggle with 1&1 their PHP5 cgi binary is
more stable than PHP4, and switching between the two is just a
.htaccess issue. In a year PHP5 will be the norm.

Plus, a lot of TYPO3 parts do need to die to give way to better and
more contemporary alternatives, for example:

- tslib_db and DBAL should die and be replaced with ADOdb-based layer.
Along this way, dates/times in the DB should BE dates and times, not
Unix timestamps.

- TypoScript should die. It's templating functions should be done
through Smarty which is much more extensible and easier to learn than
all these wraps/stdWraps. The configuration functions can either be
switched to XML or kept as key=value pairs.

- TYPO3  v.5 should use Unicode by default and at all times, and use
mbstring or something similar to do it instead of how it's done now

- BE should be based on AJAX

- XCLASSing should die and be replaced with some technique that would
allow chaining more than 1 extensions to a class.

- hooks should die and be replaced/refactored into new methods empty
in the original class

If I have a glimpse of hope of having at least half of this in 5.0 in
2 years and a promise that 4.x branch will be supported/bugfixed 
until then I'd be a very happy camper! ;))

--
Dimitri Tarassenko