[TYPO3-core] [TYPO3-core-internal] Deprecation strategy

[Philipp Gampe]

Hi Christian,
 
> The important point is that the em must support branches properly, and
> probably the TER display must be tuned here as well:
> 
> Currently em will by default only choose the latest version of an
> extension.
> 
> It would be great, if an ext author could for example maintain branch
> 1.0.x of an extension supporting 4.5 and 4.6, and a different branch
> with version 1.1.x supporting 4.7 and 6.0.
> 
> The em then must only chose the 'fitting' branch: On a 4.5 instance it
> should choose 1.0, on 4.7 it would display 1.1.x as installable /
> ugradable version.
> Other package systems can do exacly this (For example in firefox it is
> not possible to install the latest version of firebug, if firefox is too
> old, a different version tree is chosen then).

Why not go the full way here and set up a repository for each major version 
of TYPO3, starting with <6.0 and 6.0?

This will give a natural sort of which extensions are still maintained.
If the author does not care, extension coordination team can push extensions 
into the next branch if enough users confirmed it still works.

The whole thing would only need a little work on T3o (mainly extending TER 
with the capability of handling more than one extension list and copying the 
page configuration for TER a few times) and some changed lines in the 
released versions to support the new URLs scheme.

If someone wants to use an older version he can just grep it from an older 
repository and import the t3x.

I do not know how complex the change at T3o would be, but I hope not that 
complicated.

The needed changes for core would be minor and the whole system would be 
transparent and easy to use.
No need to implement branches and complex logic into TYPO3 core if simply 
another path segment in the download URL would do the job.

Of course there would not be 5000+ extensions any more, but more like 
200-300, but I think this is OK as long as those are maintained and in good 
"shape".

Best regards
-- 
Philipp Gampe – PGP-Key 0AD96065 – TYPO3 UG Bonn/Köln
Documentation – linkvalidator
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