At one local TYPO3 event we were wondering what will happen with TYPO3 v4 after TYPO3 v5 appears. I was wondering too for a while until i found the Berlin Manifesto.
The Berlin Manifesto was adopted by the TYPO3 Core team in the autumn of 2008 at a development meeting in Berlin. It clearly states that:
- TYPO3 v4 will be actively developed even after the release of TYPO3 v5
- The upcoming releases of TYPO3 v4 will see its features converge with those in TYPO3 v5
- TYPO3 v5 will be the successor of TYPO3 v4
- Migration of content will be possible from TYPO3 v4 to TYPO3 v5
- TYPO3 v5 comes with lots of new ideas, learning never stops!
This is what the Berlin Manifesto states. And as we can see it until now they are on track with the development of TYPO3 v4 which becomes better and better with every release. Also the features of the two big versions are converging, Extbase and Fluid are available in TYPO3 v4 and working with these will ensure that the extensions built with these tools will be easily portable to TYPO3 v5.
TYPO3 v5 is not yet available, not even beta versions, but probably this year or next year we will see beta versions and its a matter of 1-2 years before TYPO3 v5 lands in our webservers. The question is how long after this TYPO3 v4 will be supported ? We can’t know for sure, but TYPO3 v4 will get at least 3 more major versions. Next week TYPO3 4.5 Long Term Support will be available and after that work starts on TYPO3 4.6. I also found references to TYPO3 4.7 in several issues in one of the teams issue trackers. Also there is a reference to TYPO3 4.8.
Its safe to say that at least 2 years from now we will have new TYPO3 v4 versions released and support will continue at least 1 year from that time while TYPO3 4.5 will have at least a 3 year support period (Long Term Support) so development of websites and extensions with TYPO3 v4 should not stop while waiting for TYPO3 v5 is a little bit premature.
Laszlo Bodor
