[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 13th Skype meeting of the release 4.5 team

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Hi dear developer-collegues,

today we hold our 14th skype meeting around the 4.5 release. We were 
complete again: Ben van't Ende (community manager), Olly Hader (core 
team leader), Benni Mack (4.4 release manager), Steffen Kamper (4.5 
technical leader) and Ernesto Baschny (4.5 release manager).

This is the second of such minutes I'm posting to the public. This 
meeting was the last meeting before our Code Sprint in Stuttgart [1]

[1] 
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Code_Sprint_Stuttgart_2010

File abstraction layer
-------------------------
Last week there was a meeting with the team, and a google doc was 
created with a protocol. More information about the project will be made 
available soon.

t3editor
----------
Tobi managed to get some things done to get the t3editor working in the 
fileadmin too. Patches already pending in the core list (#15970 and
#15950).

One thing to consider would be to place "codemirror" into 
typo3/contrib/, because Steffen mentioned that he could also use it 
through ExtJS directly (for example to integrate it in the new EM).

Currently the codemirror shipped in t3editor has some modifications from 
the original code. Tobi wanted to check if it is no longer required in 
the newest codemirror version. Tobi will be on holidays since tomorrow, 
so the core team has to review / commit without Tobi's further interaction.

Code Sprint Stuttgart
----------------------
Ernesto started describing the organization of the meeting. Catering is 
organized for some basic "snacks" and drinks at the location. The 
intrastructure will work through cron IT's network. We'll have WLAN and 
some server with Apache / PHP / Samba to get things tested and shared 
easily.

People will start coming on thursday afternoon. Olly will come to 
Stuttgart already on wednesday afternoon, and will stay with Benni, so 
both will be able to be at the location (together with Ernesto) 
Wednesday morning. We'll use the time to organize stuff.

We'll have a larger room (ground floor) and a smaller room (roof-floor). 
Also a nice terrasse with sitting possibilities to further discuss 
matters "in smoking pauses".

Ben reminded us that is important to communicate about that event, and 
have some summary afterwards as a "news" is a good way of getting 
peoples attention.

Ernesto also noticed that this will kick-start the last month until the 
feature freeze of 4.5 development, so it is a very good opportunity to 
get the contributors motivated. We'll have to maintain it further after 
the event.

Work @Code Sprint
--------------------
Steffen wants to work on a Debug switch for the backend, so a switch to 
disable all compression / concatenation of JS to be able to better 
develop on these areas.

Ernesto said that we will will assemble small teams at the Sprint. Olly, 
Benni, Steffen and Ernesto will be the "organization" team responsible 
for getting people working on stuff and deciding when we do what.

On saturday morning we will make a brainstorming round to optimize the 
process for the last 2 days with the experience gained from the first 
two days.

Design Team @Code Sprint
--------------------------
We will have Jens and Lars from the design / usability team with us 
(Lars Fri/Sat, Jens Thu/Sat). There are many backend issues that we'll 
be able to discuss with them. Jens will also be able to further get Lars 
involved in the usability of the v4 backend.

Steffen wants to tackle the "loading mask" of the new panels.

Performance
-------------
Olly reminded that we promised the "fastest TYPO3 ever". He asked what 
are the current plans on that matter. He mentioned the "feuser handling" 
which might be a candidate for optimization (no FE-user handling if site 
has no FE users).

Ernesto explained that he already contacted Rupi, which is still 
interested in doing performance profiling and optimizations (like he did 
for 4.3). He is also aware of our release schedule. Ernesto also noted 
that even after feature freeze we will be able to still make performance 
tunings, so the limit for these kind of tasks is not as hard as for 
regular "features".

Ernesto asked Ben about Patrick, about the MENU_DATA issue. @ben will 
ask Patrick what's the current status.

Steffen mentioned that we already have some (small) stuff done in our 
latest alpha2. Backend loading is faster (no more frameset), stdWrap 
improvements pending in core list and Christian Kuhn working on some 
Caching Framework issues.

UTF8 by default
-----------------
This is almost done already (Benni and Stucki during the T3CON core 
meetings). It just needs more testing and a finally also a guide for 
migrations. Stucki is on vacations and is wanting to further tests again 
after he returns.

The topic has a slot during the Code Sprint, so maybe other "eyes" could 
take a look at it.

Historic Bizarre Bugs
-----------------------
Topic shifted into discussing some bugs like #15799 and #15822. Using 
$this in static classes and some typos in methods that never really 
worked as expected.

Olly mentioned (like in the core list already) to better fix the "real 
problem" and also address the initial intention of the code.

Steffen also asked about the admin panel issue (#15511). Benni explained 
that "override" overrides everything (user cannot change it, checkbox 
should be grayed out in the panel), while .setup is just the default 
which the user can alter (in their saved user-settings, by clicking on 
the checkboxes in the admPanel).

Fronteers 2010
---------------
Peter Foerger and ben have been to the Fronteers conference [2]. Steffen 
talked to Peter who said they it was very nice. TYPO3 can learn much 
from their presentations. @ben wants to point to resources about doing 
presentations. He also liked the fact that they had only one track (so 
everybody was concentrated on one topic).

Ben also mentioned it was "eye-opening" to see how much we still have to 
do. The "Content Rendering Group" still has lots of work. Ernesto 
suggested to "regather" our ancient "content rendering group" to tackle 
the new challenges (HTML5).

[2] http://fronteers.nl/congres/2010

HTML5 by default in the BE
----------------------------
Benni made the patch. Steffen mentioned that it might be problematic 
with IE. Ernesto thinks that the IE issues are only relevant if we start 
using "new tags" that are not in HTML4, where we would need some JS 
wrapping to magically "add" those to the DOM [2]

Someone on the list mentioned CSS problems, might be that IE moves on to 
quirks mode and breaks rendering.

[2] http://code.google.com/p/html5shim/

indexed search
----------------
Dmitry started refactoring indexed search, using a github repository. He 
will spend some time on it next weeks. @Ernesto will get in touch with 
him in regards of: 1) is there an URL of github where we can take a peak 
on it and 2) how his plans are in regards to the 4.5 release cycle. Will 
we be able to get some smaller steps in between, or will all changes 
come "at once" at the end (before feature freeze, we hope).

Release
----------
Olly assured that 4.3.8 will be released tomorrow. No further 
regressions have been reported so far from our previous releases. 
Ernesto mentioned that he installed the patch on all customer servers 
and noone complained yet. ;)

Next steps
-------------
- FAL meeting on wednesday
- We'll meet for the Code Sprint starting on Thursday.
- next release meeting next monday (reviewing the code sprint and 
preparing for the alpha3 release on wednesday!).


Cheers,
Ernesto