[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 25th meeting of the release 4.5 team

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Hi dear friends,

we did another meeting today, discussing the reactions we've got in the
last past days and preparing for the next release which will take place
on Wednesday. We again used Skype (instead of Big Blue Button which we
used last week) because of the better voice quality and also because of
our BBB installation already being busy at 15h by the Phoenix team. But
we're looking forward to get a more professional BBB installation, as it
proves to have very useful functionality.

Present were: Olly Hader (core team leader), Ben van't Ende (community
manager), Benni Mack (4.4 release manager), Ingmar Schlecht (as an
active listener), Steffen Kamper (4.5 technical leader) and Ernesto
Baschny (4.5 release manager).

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Release Plan Revised
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Since we are in the final sprint for the release, it is natural that
certain concerns are raised about the current status and its maturity in
order to be released as a "final version". Steffen and Ernesto
summarized the concerns raised so far by the rest of the core team.

Steffen elaborated that most criticism is very vague and most
outstanding bugs are not that critical. New projects have seen a
dramatic development since they have been included in the core. Benni
mentioned that the publics reaction is not to be taken as a personal
criticism, but a constructive gathering of ideas on how to proceed. We
all agreed that everybody actively involved - especially including the
release team - want a stable and reliable release.

Planned Beta4
---------------------------

Since there are still open bugs which are known but for which we won't
have enough manpower to tackle until Wednesday (12nd), Ernesto suggested to:

* Ship a last beta (beta4) on Wednesday (12nd January)
* Ship a RC1 a week later (19th January)
* Ship the final release another week later (26th January)

This won't change the final release date, which was fixed from start,
and will give the right impression on the current snapshot that we'll be
making on Wednesday. The whole release team approved the idea, so these
changes have already been reflected on the "Release
Plan":http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Release_Plan page.

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In Production
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Steffen also noted that several instances are already running current
trunk without any problems for some time, including two bigger
universities (with more 1.000s of users and >20.000 pages). Especially
the new page tree brings lots of improvements in the performance of the
backend on those sites.

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New Extension Manager
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some criticism was made about the new extension manager and its current
state. Lot of progress was done since the last release (beta3) already,
so the most annoying bugs or lack of features is already tackled.

Ernesto noted that the "old modules" are still there and mentioned that
we need to get those disabled for the release, since it would be
confusing to have "several modules" to do the same stuff. Steffen
already has a switch to "Show old modules" in the EM configuration,
which will default to *off* on the next release. For the final release
the goal is to get rid of this switch, since all functionality will then
be accessible through the new EM.

Ernesto also noted that the "Retrieve Button" is not visible on
"smaller" screens (<1280px), Steffen is already working on having that
as a smaller button before the repository selector (in cooperation with
Jens / Design Team).

Steffen is also finishing the work on the "dependencies check", which
never really worked as intended. This is almost finished.

So the goal is still to have the new EM included for the final release.
Since it is based on the "old codebase", the old modules are still
shipped, but just not directly accessible anymore (except if you know
their URL for example).

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Translation status
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Steffen noted that the german translations are nearly complete. Ben did
quite a lot in the Dutch translations. @ben will ask the French guys to
start their work. Other teams haven't begun yet. Idea would be to
contact the translation teams individually to inform them about it. @Ben
will try to do that, maybe using the translation mailing list, as
Ernesto suggested.

Ben was annoyed by some changes in labels which just changed the "case"
("Upper Case"). Those have to be manually checked if the meaning is
still correct in the translation.

Ernesto had a meeting later on with Jeff Segars, Ingo Renner and Jo
Hasenau on the labels in TCEforms for pages and tt_content and the
"renderInverted" FYI reversal. We decided some things:

* Checkboxes with "Enabled" and "Disabled" are ok, even thou Joey and
the decision from the UXW was about having everything "speakeable". Joey
will go through the changes from FYI #16857 and see if he spots
something that he doesn't like.
* We'll use "Disabled" and "Enabled" (describing the state) in all
forms. And "Enable" / "Disable" (action) on context menus.
* There are still some "Hide" / "Show" in context menus (of Web>List
module).
* "Include Subpages" is misleading and we decided to go with "Extends to
Subpages" (after also considering "Inherited on Subpages", "Including
Subpages" and other variants).
* "SysFolder" will be kept renamed to "Folder" as it is more user
friendly (and "System Folder" would be unnecessary, because we don't
have any other "Folder" concept).
* "Title Case": Jeff and Ingo explained that on titles and short labels,
it is recommented in English to use the so called "Title Case", which
means that all important words are upper cased and binding words (like
"as", "per", "a" etc) remain lower cased. So those changes are ok and
will make the backend more consistent (if used consistently). This
change is not needed to be done on translations: Translators should only
need to "save" the translation again (confirming that the original label
is ok).
* Ingo will take a look on how to resolve the "renderInverted" matter
without breaking any other part. He'll first evaluate if it is worth the
effort, else we'll skip this feature for 4.6. After that decision, Jeff
will continue working on the CSH part.

Basically Ingo is responsible for the above changes, with Jeff working
on the CSH part and Joey overseeing the changes.

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External Projects
----------------------------------------------------------------------

We went through the list of system projects currently hosted on forge
(below "TYPO3 4.5
Projects":http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects):

ExtJS trees
------------------------------

Ernesto urged Steffen to have the new pagetree integrated in the core
before beta4 so that this integration can be further tested. Steffen
wants to wait until Stefan Galinski and Susanne Moog finishes their last
fixes in their "pagetree
repository":http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-extjstrees/repository.
@Steffen will talk to the team later on.

After that merge, the forge projects repository will become "obsolete"
and also the issue tracker will be stopped (issues should be filed on
the regular TYPO3 mantis bug tracker).

Fluid / Extbase
------------------------------

@Ernesto will contact the Extbase team to see if there was progress
lately and if we need to merge / tag before the Wednesday release.

Linkvalidator
------------------------------

Christian Kuhn gave some more feedback and Olly Hader still has this
review pending on his list. Project is still active (lots of stuff
happened since beta3) and will need tagging / merging on Wednesday.

Modern Backend / Grid view
------------------------------

Project is integrated in the core already, so forge repository can be
closed. Also the issue tracker should be closed (new issues should be
opened on Mantis).

@ben noted that we need more "user testing" on that grid view area, to
be sure that we have it stable.

Steffen mentioned that the Wizard needs some tooltips to make it clear
what the icons do. That could be a task for Joey, but might be difficult
due to the required ExtJS expertise. Ernesto suggested for Steffen to
implement one sample tooltip in that Wizard so that Joey (or someone
else) can follow the example.

Workspaces / Versioning
------------------------------

Meeting at 18h, Benni and Olly will remind of the need to merge before
Wednesday. Development will go on on Forge as usual.

DBAL
------------------------------

Nothing new here since beta3, Xavier continued development on DBAL2
branch (already a 4.6 project). So no need to merge / tag anything for
beta4. @Ernesto will ask Xavier if there are pending known issues.

t3editor
------------------------------

Tobias and the team is now using forge for the current development and
only merging with TYPO3 core's trunk before the releases (as it is also
the case with extbase, fluid, dbal). There was no more activity since
beta2, and @Ernesto will ask Tobi if there are something planned on
t3editor on the next weeks.

Other projects
------------------------------

* Accounts: currently dead, will become a 4.6 project
* Backend Code Clean-Up: Ongoing process, maybe dead, maybe continuation
in 4.6.
* FORM / Form API: postponed to 4.6.
* Generic fluid views: parts already integrated in ViewHelpers (e.g.
Paginator), might be dead, might get some continuation in 4.6.
* Indexed Search: postponed to 4.6.
* Pimp Your TypoScript: already went into core, can be dropped on forge.
* TCA cleanup: already went into core, can be dropped on forge.
* TCEforms Refactoring: postponed to 4.6 (Code Sprint for it going on
this week!)

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plupload
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Christian Mueller got in touch with Steffen Kamper and will try to
finish the already started implementation of plupload, now without the
whole FAL framework.  It is nearly done, some tiny integration still
missing. Also the usability of the uploader needs some buttons / labels
rearrangement to make it more useable, Christian will look at it.
Steffen looked at how vBulletin implemented it, and it is as ugly as the
original one.

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GIT infrastructure
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Olly asked about the status of the transition to GIT / Gerrit. Ernesto
participated in the kick-start of the team right before christmas 2010,
and gave a brief report on the status. Pending is still a cleaned up
protocol of that meeting. The "meeting
notes":http://typo3.ietherpad.com/20 are thou available in raw form, as
written during the meeting. The project also has an "issue
tracker":http://forge.typo3.org/projects/team-git, so next steps is to
fill the tracker with to-dos.

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ExtJS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Steffen gave an insight that Phoenix team will be using ExtJS 4, as soon
as it is out (still beta). The release schedule of ExtJS is unclear so
that the Phoenix team will wait for an indefinite amount of time.

It seems that Sencha (the company behind ExtJS) recently hired more
people to work on ExtJS. We currently have ExtJS 3.3.1 in trunk and will
ship 4.5 with it. There is still activity on 3.3 going on, and since we
will have a LTS release, we will be upgrading to the next minor
releases, if they prove to be fully backwards compatible during the
release cycle of 4.5.

Viewport CSS/ExtJS bug
------------------------------

Steffen is also active in the ExtJS forums and knows who to ask for
help. Ernesto suggested Steffen to contact some active ExtJS expert to
take a look at that strange problem we have in our ExtJS viewports: As
soon as one component hits a link with an anchor, the whole backend
content is shifted upwards by some pixels ("RFC
#15771":http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=15771). This can only be fixed
by reloading the backend. Known places where this happens:

* Editing a constant in the CONSTANT EDITOR
* In the new EM selecting a local extension and moving to the "File" tab
(Steffen has no clue why this triggers an anchor link, but probably from
the embedded code mirror editor in an IFRAME)
* Previewing a content element (Web>View), which jumps to that content
element in the frontend. This even triggers the bug when the preview is
opened in a new window!

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

So as already sketched, the release team will meet on Wednesday to
release beta4. After that will meet again next Monday and discuss the
open issues.

Meanwhile Ernesto and Steffen will also try to mobilize more developers
to be more involved in the current last steps (reviewing, testing,
reporting, fixing stuff), maybe even financially motivating some people
to participate (using parts of the available v4 budget). Ernesto still
will create a list of "most important" issues, and also expects some
more input on that area from Benni, Olly, Ingmar and Ben about it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Minutes "Online"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

As usual, these minutes are also published (and made eternal...) in our
projects wiki:

  http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki

There you find all minutes from since the 12th Meetings. The meetings
before that have minutes which were only shared internally amongst the
core developers, before we decided to make them public.

I still hope they are an interesting read for the general public. One of
the goals with this release was to make the release process and the
development phase more transparent to people that want to follow it. One
important aspect is to write down what was discussed in internal Skype
meetings. So nothing is secretly done "behind your back", every step is
documented and also brought to public for discussion (reason to have
these minutes also on the mailing list). Please share your thoughts
about this procedure and how it could be optimized. Thanks!

Cheers,
Ernesto