25/09 2015

Roadmap 2015/2016

A brief update about what to expect from FluidTYPO3 for the next 15 months.

FluidTYPO3 in 2015/2016

To start with the most important thing: FluidTYPO3 will stay relevant in 2016, for the next TYPO3 LTS as well as future iterations. We will be actively maintaining the project in all of 2016 and of course LTS support will be mandatory - you will always be able to use FluidTYPO3 on the most recent TYPO3 LTS release (but may not be able to use all the most recent FluidTYPO3 features; it is impossible to predict but we will do our very best to provide a consistent experience on LTS and the most recent release of TYPO3).

2015

Later this year, around the release of TYPO3 LTS, we will be hosting a code sprint with focus on perfecting the compatibility with the coming LTS. The code sprint will be in Regensburg, Germany - and of course there will be more information about that as we get closer. Both team members and contributors will attend.

We will then release the result after the code sprint. We can only judge from the current status of development in TYPO3 but it looks like you can expect an upgrade process with minimal, potentially zero issues, if you're coming from the most recent versions of FluidTYPO3.

After this release we may host another code sprint (still undecided). No major releases are planned in 2015 after the LTS compatible release; however, please be aware that we follow a semantic versioning scheme and minor/major releases are determined by features and breaking changes - which means we can't always predict when those releases might happen. As always, we will create bug fix releases as we accumulate fixes.

A site redesign may be coming up but should not affect your existing links; we will take great care to provide long term redirects if any pages should move.

2016

We have applied for a budget in 2016 same as in 2015, for approximately the same amount. The results of this will naturally be published after budget voting ends - but if we are granted a budget, it is planned to have two or three code sprints during 2016 and to provide immediate releases compatible with all coming major/minor versions of TYPO3. The project does not depend on them to stay alive but we happily accept budget grants - and of course donations and contributions of manpower.

Throughout 2016 we will provide regular bug fix releases - with approximately the same frequency as in 2015.

Secondary plans and predictions

Since we are not currently fully aware of the final feature sets of coming TYPO3 releases, the following information is only theoretical - but the list is limited to only the most probable predictions of what to expect in terms of features associated with FluidTYPO3. Still, you should take this with a grain of salt. All goals may not be reachable or practical, others may change as more and more FluidTYPO3-like behavior gets implemented in the TYPO3 core.

Unfortunately, at this time of writing this, all of these come without references to current status. It makes little sense to link to specific code that is development-only and may change without notice.

1. TYPO3 core provides Fluid-based content element renderings. This has the potential to replace fluidcontent_core should it mature enough - and should that happen, the features currently provided by fluidcontent_core can be reproduced as a controller-and-Flux integration for those core elements instead. This has been a long time coming and luckily fluidcontent_core was never out of beta and the core's feature already looks almost entirely compatible (except for the concepts of variants and versions, if you are familiar with fluidcontent_core).
2. TYPO3 core provides nested content feature. This will almost certainly make Flux's similar feature redundant - but due to the way Flux was created, it will be perfectly possible to attach every Flux-related feature to the TYPO3 core nested content feature. In other words, you will still be able to define a flux:grid and form fields for those elements. It is at the current time not possible to say how this will be done; only that it inevitably will.
3. TYPO3 core will switch to using the standalone version of Fluid as a dependency which will give us (as integration facilitators) and you (as template writer) a huge variety of new possibilities in Fluid. Flux will remain compatible with this setup and not only that, Flux may be partially decoupled from TYPO3 to be made available also in standalone Fluid and other frameworks. The key thing you should take away from this as a user is that you won't experience incompatibilities - but can expect to gain many new abilities for your Fluid and Flux templates in the near future.

Although the Fluid standalone subject deserves a lot of attention and further explanation we still await (a lot more) official communication about what is being done with this project. Until then, your best source of information about that project is the TYPO3Fluid/Fluid GitHub repository, readmes, issues etc.

Overall, the future looks bright!

Kind regards,
The FluidTYPO3 team