[TYPO3-dev] [TYPO3-v4] TYPO3 4.5 alpha 2 in two weeks

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Hi dear developers,

with excitement I observe teams working on issues for our new release
4.5. I can feel by the communication on the mailing lists and in our
meetings that there is a general awareness that 4.5 as a "long term
support" release [1] is a very important milestone, and that we all want
to include the best and most stable stuff we are able to produce.

To keep up with the expectations, we are working hard to keep the ball
rolling. This means that we do weekly meetings to discuss the current
issues (release managers Steffen and myself, core team leader Olly Hader
and TYPO3 product manager ben van't ende). Besides that, the release
team also is present in almost all other team meetings that are taking
place (I am glad that we are a team of two and not only one..).

This means a lot of activity and a lot of stuff "happening":

* the workspaces team [2] is going to do a code sprint next week, and we
expect nice results from it,
* the design and usability team [3] is interacting with the core team in
order to reach our goal to get the backend streamlined,
* the "modern Web>Page module" project [4] is starting to produce some
results, getting back in track after some months of pause (after the
T3UXW09),
* backend getting streamlined with ExtJS: no more frames, resizeable
page tree area, ExtJs module menu, ...
* other smaller teams are forming (e.g. Forms API [5]) spontaneously on
the mailing lists.

The most effective way of getting results proves to be settling regular
scheduled meetings between the members of the team. Without that, you
quickly loose track of what is going on, you loose motivation because of
lack of feedback, and you probably miss important deadlines.

One of those deadlines is set for two weeks from now according to our
Release Plan [6].

	4.5alpha2 to be released Wednesday, 22.9.2010

Another important date to mark on your calendar will be a "Release 4.5
Code Sprint" to take place in Stuttgart October 14. until 17. (Thursday
to Sunday). More details will be announced later. But it will be
awesome! Finishing up stuff to be included before feature freeze in a
huge team effort!

Thanks for your help and if you have any question, suggestion or want to
help and don't know what to do, get in touch with us!

Cheers,
Ernesto

[1] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Long_Term_Support
[2] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-workspaces
[3] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/hci
[4] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-modernbe
[5] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-form-api
[6] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Release_Plan