[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 22nd and 23th meeting of the release 4.5 team

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Hi folks,

This week we had two meetings: on Monday (with Benni, Steffen and
Ernesto) and another one on Wednesday (with Ben, Steffen and Ernesto).
We discussed the current roadmap and project status for the 4.5 release.

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Projects
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TCA re-layout of fields in palettes (pages / tt_content)
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Steffen spoke to Joey about it and there are plenty of extensions which
will have some troubles because of the way they used to add / replace
fields in our main tables until now. For example dam_pages uses
str_replace() to manipulate the field list. Since the original field is
now on a palette, it won't work anymore.

To insert fields into existing table's TCA, we have this API in
t3lib_extMgm:

* addToAllTCAtypes: This is already enhanced by Joey in #16096 [1]: If
someone adds after/before a field which is now inside a palette, the new
field gets added after/before the whole palette (which will be the most
optimal position and cause less trouble).
* addFieldsToAllPalettesOfField: Might need some work still.

To complete this API, to make future extensions "future proof", Joey
wants to add two more functions:

* removeFromAllTCAtypes
* replaceInAllTCAtypes

[1] http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=16096

Grid view
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Ernesto suggested, and Steffen also talked to Joey about this one: We
don't want an "extra module" for the user to choose from ("Grid-View"),
but it should be intuitive and it should auto-select the right module:
If there is a grid available, use it, if there is none, just display the
plain old columns view. Joey also wants to add a TSconfig to switch off
grid view if someone doesn't want it (Ernesto thinks this is not needed,
but..). So the user will always go to the "Columns" sub-module as before.

The teams issue tracker [2] seems a lot cleaner today. Steffen wants to
add some explanatory tooltips to the wizard still. Steffen is also
almost done with the Drag&drop in the page module which will work on the
Columns and in the Grid view.

[2] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-modernbe/issues

Linkchecker
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Patrick spoke to Steffen about the status and is still motivated to
continue working on the project. The issue tracker [3] has been cleaned
up and there has been some activity lately. The team is very pleased to
hear more helpful comments and would probably appreciate some more help
(reviews, bug reporting and code reviews) to finish up potential open
ends, a pre-condition to stay in core for the 4.5 release.

[3] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-linkvalidator/issues

ExtJS state provider
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Steffen created a state provider, which every ExtJS component in backend
can use (already in use by the new EM). All ExtJS components have a
"state" option, which uses a cookie provider by default. The new
provider saves the information in the be-user record. Steffen added a
sample usage in the recycler (storing the column sorting state). See RFC
16738 [4].

[4] http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=16738

Pagetree
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Galinski worked hard on it these last days and the new page tree is
nearly finished. The filtering works very well and much more intuitive
than the filter we have had before. Stefan is working on the mounts.
Current project status will be integrated shorting in our trunk, in time
for beta3 and is as good as feature complete. In the end it will most
probably not be a sysext anymore but integrated in the core.

New extension manager
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Still some things to do and some tiny bugs here and there. But Steffen
has them all in his spotlight and is tackling them one by one. For
example it is currently difficult to decide when to "close" the popup
upon installation or deinstallation of an extension, because it can have
so many non-predictable status (dependencies with more popups, an
"UPDATE", etc). As a last resort (if everything else fails), Steffen
will rework it so that it just opens a popup as it used to be (instead
of a ExtJS modal window).

Workspace team
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The caching after loading hte information would be very well needed to
improve the performance of the module. There is still lacking some
further "stress test" on the new module by the WS team.

Skin team
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Skin team is starting to come up with some RFC from its efforts. It is
still a long way until we have an optimal workflow, and the team is
still very fresh and many new members with not much experience in TYPO3
Backend, but Steffen Gebert is doing a great job in leading that team
and most members seem very motivated to learn and continue working on it.

There is still a major performance problem with the CSS3's drop shadow
on Webkit browsers (Safari): Upon loading the Backend in Safari the
browser almost stops responding, investigations suggested that the
drop-shadow properties might be the reason (used e.g. in the Workspace
coloring of the top bar and also between the modules / pagetree / main
content.

File abstraction layer
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Steffen will talk later to Mattes about the current status of the project.

Live search
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Jeff will work on some last issues on it. For example search for
"table:<pid>" works after you hit "ENTER", but the auto-suggest box is
empty in between ("no matches"). This could be improved by showing the
potential results while typing.

Admin panel
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Jeff will also meet with Jens to finish the task of a cleaned up admin
panel started by Dmitry (RFC 15853 [5] and Issue 10199 [6]). There was a
suggestion from Martin (Design Team), which also reworked some usability
issues, but considering the available man-power we will concentrate to
get the "beautified" Admin Panel into the core for 4.5 and think about
the overall usability issues in the releases to come.

[5] http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=15853
[6] http://forge.typo3.org/issues/10199

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Organizational
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Translations
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Jeff is working with Mark Lehm (Infield / SF) on CSH labels for pages /
tt_content on Ernesto's request. Dmitry told us that the translation
server is already working on trunk for a couple of time, but not updated
since some weeks. So some translation work can already take place on the
translation server. Ben mentioned that he already did some work there.

Officially we will declare the labels "stable" with the release of
beta3. But there are already some parts which won't change that much,
and where work could already start. For example the labels in TCA for
pages and tt_content (only the context help rework is still missing).

Bug Tracker
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We finally removed the "Versioning & Workspaces" category from main
TYPO3 project (Mantis). Benni moved all issues to the subproject
"Workspaces" (which is now marked as "obsolete", because the issues
should go to the Forge project).

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Schedule
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Postponing beta3
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Beta3 was scheduled for next week (22th December), but considering
current project status and our own workload, we decided that it would
make sense to postpone the release for some days. So release of beta3
will happen on *Monday, 27th December*.

Ernesto will announce that on a separate news entry.

Bug Day on Friday
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We will try to collect a list of pending issues for beta3, which could
be good candidates for the bug day which will take place on Friday
(17th). Ben will put a teaser to the bug day on typo3.org and Steffen
and Ernesto will list issues in the Bug Day's page [7].

We'll ask Jigal to give us a summary of open and pending ImageMagick
issues which might get special focus on the bug day. There are also some
Install Tool troubles Steffen K noticed and a trouble in the User
settings: hitting ENTER to submit might create the "ENABLE_INSTALL_TOOL"
file on some browsers. Ernesto thinks that the Create button shouldn't
be a submit button.

For the 4.5 release Steffen and Ernesto feel that we have got plenty of
very nice features but we are not yet satisfied with the amount of open
bugs. We want to prioritize fixing every potential bug and need help on
identifying, finding, fixing and reviewing the fixes. Help from all is
very appreciated, even if it is only to report some found bug!

[7] http://wiki.typo3.org/BugDay/201012.

Next meeting
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Next Monday (20th) we'll meet for a last time this year with Ernesto,
since he will be gone until 4th January. On the weekend, Ernesto will
try to pass all necessary information to Steffen for him to release
beta3 on the 27th with the help of Olly and Benni.


Cheers,
Ernesto