Tomas and I took a break for a couple of weeks - balance reasons. We're back now looking at the admin aspects of TYPO3.

Ever wondered how TYPO3 manages to upgrade its releases, keep consistency and deliver upon user needs? Well, that's what we looked at in this session.

Session 10

We went over how TYPO3 versions are released, the support for those releases and methods used to ensure this goes well.

There are several things that go on to make sure you have a working version of TYPO3. They range from how release cycles are handled, how support is provided etc...

Release Cycles

Generally, TYPO3 releases new versions every two months. These months are a period of change.

The way this happens is that when a TYPO3 version hits a .0 iteration there should be no breaking changes. Improvements are made until it reaches its LTS (Long Term Support) version.

Support

Below is a chart that illustrates how support is handled. I'll explain the important parts of the support cylces.

Green
The green area is the period where the version is fully supported.

Dark Orange
When it reaches this stage, it will receive only security bug fixes and maintenance.

Light Orange
This is when the version enters Extended Long Term Support (ELTS)

ELTS

The way ELTS works is this way:

Say you have a client running an older version of TYPO3 and they are not yet prepared to upgrade, they don't have to. They can instead pay a set fee to continue getting support for the version they are on. Then upgrade when are ready.

SLA

This stands for Service Level Agreement. In essence, you pay a flat fee to get things done. It makes it easier for clients to come back with changes.

A time card is a type of a SLA.

What this then means is that if you were to install TYPO3 version 11.5 today, you are guaranteed a working system for 6 years.

Organising Work

In any working environment, there have to be systems in place to keep track of what needs to be done and progress on these tasks.

A common methodology of work organisation is Agile. Agile can be divided into:

• SCRUM
• Kanban

These two concepts warrant posts of their own because there is a lot to unpack

CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment are two DevOps practices

Continuous Integration

CI whereby code is merged from developers' working copies to a shared central repository several times a day.

Continuous Deployment

CD uses automated testing to verify if changes made to a codebase are correct and stable enough for automatic deployment.

As the practices are hard to wrap around in just words, Tomas showed me how he implements CI and CD in the TYPO3 crawler he created.

Homework

There was no homework this session either. More time to compile the PDF.

Thoughts

TYPO3 is a big project, it comes as no surprise that a lot of work goes into ensuring users have a relatively seamless experience.

It was really cool having a look at what goes into making that possible.

Thank you for reading, let's connect!

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