[TYPO3-dev] Extensions need update for 4.3!

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Michael Stucki wrote: on 16.10.2008 12:54:
>>> - Fixing buggy extensions takes only one line to change, and good
>>>   programmers know how to fix it without loosing more than 5 minutes of
>>>   their valuable time.
>> But who will fix extensions in TER where no extension author is
>> available for a long time? This would be no problem for extensions with
>> a soon reacting extension author. IMHO there should be a possibility to
>> upload an extension into TER for others if the author does not respond.
> 
> I was referring to site owners, not extension authors. I don't depend on
> the extension author to fix such a one-liner. But of course, having the
> upstream extension fixed would be way better...

You know how to fix it, I know it, many other developer also do. But I
wouldn't expect to need a PHP developer to upgrade a TYPO3 site.

I agree to mark the "null" default as deprecated in 4.3 so we can get
rid of it in 4.5.

Btw, do we have some "list" of stuff we want to deprecate when? The list
at http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Deprecated_features hasn't been
maintained for long. I think there should be a clear policy on how to
introduce "deprecations", just as we have when documenting Documentation
changes. My idea:

1) core developer touches some code and notices that he needed to add
some ugly "backwards compatibility" layer to keep older extensions or
sites happy.
2) He marks the "hack" as DEPRECATED (in the source code) and
3) Writes down the hack, the release version in the above mentioned wiki
page. Also on that page he notes when the backwards compatibility "hack"
will be deleted (2 major versions later, as we have agreed some years
ago) and how it will affect sites.

Before some major release (at alpha status, so that it can be tested),
the release manager goes through a list in the Wiki and kills all
deprecated stuff from the code (in one huge RFC). The wiki information
is then introduced into the NEWS.txt for all to know about it. The newly
stuff marked for deprecation will also be noticed in NEWS.txt, giving
site developers enough time to take care of it.

Cheers,
Ernesto