[TYPO3-mvc] Why don't we suck at TYPO3?

Mon May 2 20:31:29 CEST 2011

Re gerrit:

I thought to use gerrit, but went to the gerrit.typo3.org page and
immediately got an apache login... uh, wt_? Of course I never read the text
in the login, and assumed that it was restricted to core devs or
something... and I never looked at it again 'til today.

IMO the page needs to either have a splash with a preview of open patches
submitted so far, or, isn't there a way to show the All > Open page without
logging in?

That is a way better way to engage the casual or first time user.

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Mattias Nilsson <mattias at pixelant.se> wrote:

> I would just like to say that everyone working with Extbase is doing a
> great
> job! I just love the possiblity to use OOP already in a TYPO3 v4
> enviroment.
> Yes of course there is always bugs and missing features, but as you mention
> it´s still under development. So far I think it´s amazing how much that
> already has been implemented and some features are just great.
>
> My contribution to the Extbase community has been zero but I hope to change
> that in the near future!  So my conclusion is just keep up the good work
> and
> enjoy the development of a great framework!
>
> With regards
> /Mattias
>
>
> On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Bastian Waidelich <bastian at typo3.org>
> wrote:
>
> > [This posting is both by Bastian Waidelich and Sebastian Kurfürst as the
> > project leads of the Extbase team]
> >
> > Hey everybody,
> >
> > we're responding to a blog post by Felix Oertel [1], where he is
> > criticising the way TYPO3 is currently progressing. In a part of this
> post,
> > he's also talking about Extbase; that's why we want to take the chance to
> > give our opinion on this, and hopefully start a fruitful discussion.
> We're
> > posting here, as we think a mailing list has a wider outreach than a blog
> > posting, and we feel it's a better place to discuss things.
> > Note that we are not only referring to Felix' posting, but also to some
> of
> > the comments.
> >
> > Furthermore, we'll be trying to make a proposal for each of the outlined
> > problems, how we would tackle and solve them.
> >
> > First we'd like to emphasize that we're not annoyed by the posting and
> that
> > we even agree to some of his points. Nevertheless, we don't share his
> > pessimistic mindset. Being part of a project one tends to see the
> negative
> > aspects of it, but there are a lot of good things happening too - a lot
> of
> > which is not visible to the general public.
> >
> > It was mentioned that Extbase is the "big transition tool", from version
> > four to version five. Probably we all agree on this fact, but we now have
> to
> > choose how to combine "the both worlds": We know Extbase is not as stable
> as
> > it should be, and that's why we'd like to shift our focus to bugfixes and
> > stability improvements (as announced on [2]).
> > On the other hand, this means that we will *not* backport every feature,
> as
> > every new feature will definitely increase the number of (unfound) bugs
> in
> > the system. We fully understand that some - including us - would like to
> > work with the FLOW3 features today, in version 4 environment, but as
> > explained above we think that's not the right strategy for now.
> > One example of this is the "Signal/Slots" feature [3], which we feel will
> > add another half-finished feature to Extbase without fixing any bug.
> > Furthermore, in v4 we already have Hooks, which perfecly do this job...
> > although they are not as "pretty" :-)
> >
> > Our Proposal: We'll create a list of features *we will NOT support* in
> the
> > wiki, explaining why and how to work around this in custom projects.
> > This will hopefully clear the direction we're currently heading.
> >
> >
> > Another stated issue was that core developers do not feel responsible for
> > Extbase, i.e. not proposing bugfixes. We think this not only applies to
> core
> > developers, but to 99% of everybody using Extbase. In Gerrit we only had
> > review requests by 5 people until now, although I am sure that, since we
> > introduced Gerrit, 100 people have patched Extbase for their custom
> project.
> > We are not sure if it's a problem of the Infrastructure, or if we did not
> > communicate enough that Gerrit should be used by *everybody* [4].
> Especially
> > testing fixes is really easy now; it's just two clicks to apply them and
> it
> > can help a lot to get a +1/-1 from someone testing it with a different
> > setup, particularly for changes that you cannot easily foresee the
> > side-effects for.
> >
> > Do you have some ideas here? What hinders *you* in using gerrit?
> >
> > For us, it's not easy to motivate people to contribute more; as we think
> > one needs some "inner drive" to do that. At the first Extbase meeting on
> the
> > Core Team Sprint besides me (Bastian), only Dmitry was there; so the
> session
> > was pretty quick; but as a lot of sessions had happened in parallel, this
> is
> > not surprising nor a reliable sign for lack of interest. Generally we
> think
> > it makes sense to  do "Extbase code sprints", however this is best for
> > bigger features or  refactorings. First off, we need to improve the
> > day-to-day workflow.
> > Furthermore, we'd like to prepare quite some sessions on the Dev Days
> > (together with you), to bring Extbase forward and hopefully more people
> will
> > attend then. As soon as we are in the planning phase for it, we'll let
> you
> > know here and collect/discuss the most pressing bugs/annoyances to be
> > resolved there.
> >
> > One more commitment by us: We both did not review the Gerrit changes as
> > fast as it should be (some being there for about a month); that's why
> we'll
> > commit ourselves to at least one hour per week looking through the open
> > changesets, testing, providing feedback and merging.
> > However, this also means that we need you: If you pushed a changeset,
> > please be prepared to answer our questions and submit follow-ups.
> >
> > In the comments of the blog posting [5] it was mentioned that Extbase is
> > missing strong leader. In fact, we're trying the opposite: While we are
> > making sure that the general goals of Extbase and FLOW3 match up and that
> > the aimed-at quality is assured, we do not see ourselves as the "main
> > implementors" of features or bugfixes. Especially, we cannot create the
> > momentum in the community to fix a bug and to share that fix. We can only
> > ask everybody to do so; and would like to help reducing any obstacles on
> > this way (especially using Gerrit, see above). We are not making Extbase,
> > the community does. We are only the shepards.
> >
> >
> > Please don't forget that we're in a different situation than a year ago:
> We
> > need to keep Extbase backwards compatible more than ever (a lot of people
> > are using it in productive projects today). On the other hand we need to
> > stay in sync with FLOW3, which is still changing a lot - and this
> conflict
> > is not easy to solve. With the beta release of FLOW3 1.0 this will
> hopefully
> > change and we'll be able to backport all the important features &
> changes.
> > To be able to keep existing Extensions running anyways, we're planning to
> > introduce a "compatibility flag" as discussed in Berlin.
> >
> > Our Proposal: We need to be more clear about the next features which will
> > be part of Extbase; but right now, as stated above, the focus is
> definitely
> > on *bugfixes, not features*. We try to improve our communication in this
> > regard.
> >
> > So let's join forces, make Extbase & TYPO3 even better and never forget
> the
> > main goal, TYPO3 Phoenix!
> >
> > Greets, Looking forward to your feedback,
> > Sebastian Kurfürst & Bastian Waidelich (Extbase & Fluid Project Leads)
> >
> > PS: Maybe we *do* suck at doing Extbase, but the above headline was more
> > twitter compatible ;-)
> >
> > [1] http://foertel.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/why-do-we-suck-at-typo3/
> > [2]
> >
> http://lists.typo3.org/pipermail/typo3-project-typo3v4mvc/2011-February/008539.html
> > [3] https://review.typo3.org/#change,1563
> > [4]
> >
> http://lists.typo3.org/pipermail/typo3-project-typo3v4mvc/2011-April/009173.html
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > TYPO3-project-typo3v4mvc mailing list
> > TYPO3-project-typo3v4mvc at lists.typo3.org
> > http://lists.typo3.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/typo3-project-typo3v4mvc
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Mvh
> /Mattias
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