[TYPO3-v4] The future of ExtJS 4 in TYPO3 4.7

[Dominique Feyer]

Really sad news, and compilicated situation :(

We we start to integrate ExtJS in the backend, I was a bit afraid about 
the "business model" of Sencha. They are not inspired to share, and 
it's a proprietary framework with a community edition.

For a long term goal I agree with the idea to keep ExtJS for the widget 
part, but switch to something else for the framework. And one of the 
most important point for the choice of this framework, it's their 
community and their opened mind. Maybe an other good point in this 
selection is to use the same framework than Phoeinx … and prepare the 
big jump/migration ;)

There's is a lots of interesting thing in the JS world currently 
(Require.js, Backbone.js, Underscore.js, Ember.js) who look more 
community oriented than Sencha.

For the short term solution, back to ExtJS 3.3 we need to think a lot 
about the performance issues of using two major ExtJS version side by 
side. Many client have invest money on complicated ExtJS backend … and 
I don't think that they have the money to pay the migration to ExtJS4 … 
but they are really interested by FAL per exemple.

Add 2 month to the deadline and try to have a FAL / Vidi on good stable 
TYPO3 version.

Kudos for every dev who work on the migration project. Failing project 
is part of life, we are not the first community in this situation.

Bests

On 2012-01-12 22:28:30 +0000, Ingmar Schlecht said:

> Hi guys,
> 
> as for the decision between the two options, I think we have no option 
> then to revert to ExtJS 3. Even if we extend the feature freeze by, 
> say, 3 months, it's still not guaranteed we can get the release stable 
> with ExtJS 4.
> 
> Whether we increase the development time of 4.7 is another question, I 
> think, and should be looked at separately then (once we agree that even 
> with 3 months more time it doesn't really make sense to force ExtJS 4 
> in the core).
> 
> cheers
> Ingmar
> 
> 
> Am 11.01.12 16:47, schrieb Oliver Hader:
>> Dear TYPO3 enthusiasts,
>> 
>> currently we all are busy in the development phase of the next version
>> TYPO3 4.7. There shall be one additional alpha3 release and in three
>> weeks the first beta version with the regular feature freeze. The
>> current state and the next steps for TYPO3 4.7 have been discussed in
>> the Release Team Meeting last Monday. So, this mail aims to share the
>> thoughts and issues with you.
>> 
>> The current state in our main development branch (master) comes with
>> ExtJS version 4, as foundation for further development of the Media
>> Management Module (the next generation of DAM) and the "Vidi" (versatile
>> and interactive display, a new generic list component) - both were part
>> of the "BLE project" [1] and are currently actively used for the new
>> File Abstraction Layer.
>> 
>> We had ExtJS version 3 in the core already for some years now and
>> components like the Recycler, Workspaces Module or the Form Wizard rely
>> on that. However, ExtJS4 is a "bit different" to ExtJS3 and thus needs
>> further non-trivial changes to the whole JavaScript code - Sencha, the
>> ExtJS distributor provided a very basic guide for that migration [2],
>> but rather than a straight migration, in some aspects it's more like a
>> rewrite. With all the custom ExtJS based components in TYPO3, that was
>> and to some degree still is a very tough job.
>> In addition, Sencha - the product owner of ExtJS - seems to have stopped
>> working on ExtJS 4.0 due to some major problems and concentrated on
>> version 4.1 which would need further adaptions - even to already
>> migrated parts [3].
>> 
>> However... most of the ExtJS 3 components in the TYPO3 Core have not
>> been forward ported to ExtJS4 yet, since it really takes some time and
>> also requires a good understanding of the the whole application to be
>> modified (e.g. knowing what the Workspaces Module or Form Wizard are
>> really doing in the ExtJS part). For the time being, an intermediate
>> compatibility layer has been added in the TYPO3 Core which allows "old"
>> ExtJS 3 applications to be executed in a framed environment. It turned
>> out that this is not really a long-term solution and besides that,
>> external extensions using ExtJS 3 would require additional changes to
>> use that compatibility layer. Further investigations of a sandboxed
>> ExtJS 4 or using it side-by-side in IFRAMEs, turned out to problematic
>> as well, when it comes to the details of integrating it in the backend.
>> 
>> These are the facts for the time being. In essence, we have a rather
>> unstable TYPO3 4.7-alpha concerning ExtJS components and a rather
>> pessimistic perspective to get all of them stable until feature freeze
>> in the next three weeks.
>> 
>> That means, that we have these possibilities:
>> 
>> a) postpone the final 4.7 release a lot and hope things will get better
>> - forward port all components to ExtJS 4
>> - introduce a great backward compatibility layer for
>> ExtJS 3 extensions
>> - create documentation on how to use ExtJS 3 and ExtJS 4
>> side by side
>> 
>> b) revert the ExtJS 4 changes in the Git master branch of the TYPO3 Core
>> - get back a stable TYPO3 4.7 with working Workspaces,
>> Form Wizard and Recycler
>> - accept the "collateral" fact that the work on ExtJS 4
>> migration is lost, which means to disappoint developers
>> who invested a lot of time in what already has been achvieved
>> - find (better) alternatives for the mentioned "media" and
>> "vidi" components
>> - find alternatives to ExtJS in general in the long-term view -
>> however, ExtJS is good for widgets, but not as a one-fits-all
>> JavaScript solution
>> 
>> It's really understandable that it must be frustrating for somebody
>> having put a lot work into the ExtJS4 migration by reading these lines
>> above. However, the end of these tasks cannot be predicted and as
>> always: time and resources are limited.
>> 
>> So, our suggestion is to revert the ExtJS 4 parts and continue with a
>> clean TYPO3 4.7. However, if somebody out there has a good alternative
>> on how to proceed with ExtJS 4, please share your thoughts and ideas. If
>> there are no major objections and no solution that really saves us, we
>> will proceed very soon with reverting back to ExtJS 3.
>> 
>> Thanks for your understanding and for your passion in TYPO3!
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Olly - on behalf of the TYPO3 4.7 Release Team
>> 
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://news.typo3.org/news/article/typo3-receives-german-governmental-funding-for-accessibility-and-usability-project/ 
>> 
>> [2] http://www.sencha.com/blog/ext-js-3-to-4-migration
>> [3] http://www.sencha.com/blog/whats-new-in-ext-js-4-1/