[TYPO3-team-core-v5] Phoenix release timeline and naming

[Robert Lemke]

Hi folks,

as you know we're going to reveal the actual product name of Phoenix at T3CON12. The renaming has of course quite some impact and requires a lot of changes everywhere. In order to be well prepared, I created a page in the Wiki where we can collect the necessary steps:

http://wiki.typo3.org/PhoenixReleaseChecklist

As for the release timeline: like we discussed, we will release the first Phoenix version at the conference and although there is a still a lot of cleanup necessary, it currently seems doable. The goal is, as discussed, to provide a great user experience for everybody installing Phoenix for a test-ride. Thus we need to take some extra care for packaging (an archive with warmed up caches etc.) and documentation. The point is that we can't integrate the name change into the code base on the day we announce the name.

With Karsten I figured out the following timeline:

*** Thursday, October 4th ***

Presentation at T3CON12DE and release of Phoenix as a downloadable archive - NOT through Git, because we need to update that after the name announcement!
At that stage we have the new name and logo incorporated into the downloadable version but not yet in git master. Also, assuming that we rename the FLOW3 namespace, that version of Phoenix is not yet based on that new namespace.

*** Tuesday, October 16th ***

Release of FLOW3 1.2 beta 1, including the new namespace (if so) and packages converted to Composer. FLOW3 also available at packagist.org at that time.

*** Tuesday, October 23th ***

Official release of Phoenix 1.0 alpha 1 from git master with all namespace / product name changes applied. 

*** Tuesday, October 30th ***

Release of FLOW3 1.2 (also matching our previously announced release date).

As we discussed, we'll announce that we are not planning to have as many alpha releases like for FLOW3. The release at T3CON12DE is mostly an alpha release because

	- the user interface is pretty much unpolished, lacking a thought-through visual design
	- the version contains features which have been introduced very lately only and we are not sure about APIs being fine
	- if people started using this version for customer projects now and the APIs change in parts like TypoScript, people will be very unhappy

This release will serve as a technical preview for plugin developers and companies / people who are looking into using Phoenix. If the full team was available for a sprint in November / December we could release a beta 1 still this year. But since a big part of the team is busy with customer projects in October and November I don't think that it's realistic. Although we should strive for a Christmas beta, it might become January / Februrary until we release such a version. 

The alpha release(s) will serve as our foundation for invoking designers / UX firms and figure out an improved user experience and design concept.

Please speak up if anything speaks against this timeline.

Best,
Robert

-- 
Robert Lemke
Lead Developer TYPO3 Phoenix and FLOW3
Co-Founder TYPO3 Association

Blog: robertlemke.de/blog
Get involved: typo3.org – flow3.org