[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 14th Skype meeting of the release 4.5 team

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Dear friends,

Today we hold our 14th Skype meeting around the 4.5 release. The Monday
meeting was postponed to Tuesday. We were complete: 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 was the first meeting after the Code Sprint in Stuttgart and the
last meeting before the alpha3 release.

Code Sprint
--------------
We expressed the good feeling we had during these days to ben, who was
not present. We discussed several projects that were touched during the
days:

FLUIDTEMPLATE
----------------
The new cObject was commited by Steffen already. Benni was for
postponing it to beta1 until the implementation gets moved into the
right place in the code. Steffen thought it was best to have it now. It
is ok for Benni, just a miscommunication. We can and will still refactor
it to get it into fluid extension.

Ernesto asked about FLUID documentation, which he than later found [1].

[1] http://flow3.typo3.org/documentation/manuals/fluid/fluid.usermanual/

CSH
------
There was some styling issues for the new CSH API that we are now using
in the TCEforms. Steffen already made a patch to make the CSH use ExtJS
and call the help using ExtDirect. This is pending in the core [2]. It
is also the first example of ExtDirect usage in v4 core! Steffen noticed
a problem that if he include ExtDirect in the header of backend.php, no
backend login is possible. Has to be analysed still (but only relevant
if we need ExtDirect in the login form).

[2] http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=16059

TCA form's rearrangement
-----------------------------
We are happy to see Joey's Page and tt_content rearrangements in the
core. Ernesto finds it important to point to the "rules" [3] that were
followed to create this scenario, so that other extensions developers
could follow those guidelines when creating new forms. For example it
would help if tt_news also followed that structure.

[3] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-tca_cleanup/wiki

Workspace team
------------------
Lots of progress, but still stuff pending to be done. This is a list
created by Sonja http://forge.typo3.org/versions/show/709. The team will
meet next monday, 25th at 18h. Benni feels very good about it, the team
is very motivated. Ben wants to make sure we stick to all release dates.
We will do so and the workspaces team is aware of the dates.

Page Tree / Context menu
---------------------------
Stefan Galinski did a lot of progress so far, the abstract classes are
there. Steffen Ritter did the start of using it by building TCA trees.
Steffen Kamper will finish that up with ExtJS so that the team can have
a sample on how it could work with ExtJS. After we have this prototype
we can see how the project goes and how far we can get until feature freeze.

File abstraction layer
---------------------------
Ingmar talked to Mattes about the Code Sprint. There were lots of
productive brainstorming with Steffen, Ingmar, Andreas and Olly. Some
code was already started [4]

The new concept of abstract trees could also be used by FAL.

There will be a Code Sprint for FAL in Düsseldorf at WMDB in November
2010 (4 days, from Thursday to Sunday). Mattes, Dan, Andreas, and others
will join. Steffen Kamper will join for a day. Olly emphasized that this
has to be a team efford.

The FAL-team Code Sprint will come after the feature freeze of 4.5. The
release team will have to evaluate the results from the sprint to decide
if an exception could be made for this project so that it enters during
beta2 phase.

[4]
https://svn.typo3.org/TYPO3v4/CoreProjects/fileabstractionlayer/trunk/t3lib/file/

Grid View
------------
No apparent progress. Thomas Hempel wasn't online during the Code
Sprint, Joey worked mainly on the TCA issues. Steffen will work on the
drag&drop for the page module soon.

Intro package
---------------
Ernesto mentioned again the introduction package and the handling with
the different branches. Steffen wants for example to include a SVG
example. Ernesto wants to include the new lightbox extension from
Susanne [5]. This would mean we need to create a new SQL dump of the
"content master". Ernesto will do the dump manually on his own machine
for the release tomorrow.

Some brainstorming about how it should work in future. We need
"branches", but still we also would need as much "content masters" as we
have released versions of TYPO3, and keep them in "sync".

Olly mentioned a bug at first install, that he was not redirected to
1-2-3 mode after going to the frontend. Ernesto said that it should work
(is a feature of core), others confirmed. Olly will check again.

[5] http://forge.typo3.org/issues/9699

t3editor
-----------
The updates on the t3editor made the "save icon" stop working. Steffen
will take a look at it, but it might be related to the upgrade to 0.9
codemirror. Pressing CTRL-S still works. @Olly will talk to Stephan
Petzl (another t3editor team member), if he might be avaliable to work
on t3editor issues in the near future.

Release of alpha3
-------------------
Release notes are ready, just waiting for us to press the button tomorrow.

Super Search
---------------
Steffen mentioned that nobody was able to contact Mick yet about the
project. Nobody has seen the code yet. We might try to get contact
through Tolleiv (work in the same office?).

Link checker
--------------
Steffen again mentioned the project [6], which also has a scheduler task
which check FE pages for no longer working links. Team around Patrick
Goumont is working on it. Michael Miousse is the one doing the programming.

Some discussion in the team if we want such extensions as a sysext.
Benni and Olly expressed their concearns about it, as this means more
code we have to maintain. Ernesto mentioned that a enterprise expects
from a CMS some kind of link checking functionality. He feels that we
need first to see the results. Steffen reminded that this was a project
brought up during the kick-off of 4.5 as a valid new feature for that
release. We need a "team" behind the idea, and to make it more
transparent to us how they work. To do so, Ernesto recommended a team
and a repository + issue tracker on forge. That would help in giving us
the feeling that this is a team efford. @Steffen will talk about it with
Patrick.

[6] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Linkvalidator

New Extension Manager
-------------------------
During the Code Sprint, Jens gave some feedback on the usability of the
new EM which Steffen already started as a very feature rich prototype.
The results of their discussions can be read here [7]

Steffen has all necessary input to continue working on it. He will also
ask for Jeff's help on that. It seems that Jeff is available for doing
some core work.

[7] http://forge.typo3.org/issues/10296

IRRE
------
Steffen asked Olly about "IRRE", and there was not much progress the
last few weeks. One missing feature is still support for workspaces.
It's still on Olly's radar.

CSS issues in the backend
------------------------------
Currently mostly Steffen Gebert working on that.

Next steps
------------

* Release alpha3 tomorrow (wednesday)
* Next meeting next week monday 14h
* Meeting with design team on thursday
* Workspaces team meeting next monday 18h


Also available online:
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Minutes_14th_Meeting_2010-10-19

Cheers,
Ernesto