Documenting Changes

Motivation and goals

Forger

If you want to save yourself some time you can use the ReST-File-Generator.

Select the type of ReST snippet you want to create, enter your issue number and click the search button.

A dedicated changelog of important changes is established to inform users, developers and other Core related teams or projects:

  • Notify extension developers, integrators and project developers about changes in the Core, like breaking changes, deprecations, database updates, and security-related changes.
  • Inform the documentation team about changes that must trigger documentation changes. A dedicated GitHub-Actions-based workflow has been set-up for this on the Changelog-To-Doc repository.
  • Allow release managers and other "Spread the word" / marketing-related people to catch up on important changes.
  • Rely on a standardized format for easy usage in scripts like a Core migration or release notes system.

Different changelog types

A changelog handles one of these change types:

Breaking change
A patch moved or removed a specific part of Core functionality that may break or affect third-party code (custom extensions, sitepackages, integrations). Removal of previously deprecated code or an interface / API change are good examples of this type.
Deprecation
A patch deprecates a certain Core functionality for a planned removal. This may also involve possible TCA migrations and related database changes.
Feature
A patch adds new functionality.
Important
Any other important message which may require manual action. This should be regarded as a last-resort, if a patch cannot be related to any of the prior types. This type is vital for giving important information on LTS releases, as they are not allowed to have new features, deprecations or breaking changes.

Casual bug fixes do not need changelog files (their information is covered through well-maintained commit messages), but every change that may be of special interest for extension developers or documentation writers should receive an entry. The changelog file must be provided as part of the patch that introduces the change.

Location

New changelog files are added to the directory of the minor version that they will be released in, for example typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/13.1 directory.

This way, it can be easily seen which change has been introduced in which released TYPO3 version.

In rare cases, patches worth a changelog file need to be backported to stable LTS and / or old stable LTS versions. Those should be put into a different directory, depending on lowest target LTS versions. We'll explain this by example:

Suppose Core is currently developing v14, a first 14.0 has been released, so the Git branch main will become version 14.1.0 with the next sprint release. So new Changelog entries so far were saved in folder typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/14.0. The stable LTS version is currently 13.4.y, so the Git branch 13.4 will become version 13.4.y+1 with the next stable LTS patch level release. The old stable LTS version is currently 12.4.y, so the Git branch 12.4 will become version 12.4.y+1 with next old stable LTS patch level release.

Example scenarios:

  • A patch is only added to main: Put the .rst file into the typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/14.1 directory in the main branch. The Core and documentation team may re-review files in this directory shortly before the 14.1 release.
  • A patch is not only added to main, but also backported to v13: Put the .rst file into the typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/13.4.x directory in the main branch. The backport to 13.4 branch includes the changelog file into 13.4.x directory, too. Users upgrading to latest patch level release of 13.4 will then see the new file in the 13.4.x directory (and on the published changelog website).

  • A patch is not only added to main, but backported to v13 and v12: Put the .rst file into typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/13.4.x and a duplicate into typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/12.4.x directories in the main branch. The backport to the 13.4 branch will have the two identical files in both directories, too. The 12.4 branch backport contains only the :file:typo3/sysext/core/Documentation/Changelog/13.4.x, because the 13.4.x` directory does not exist in that branch.

    Users upgrading to latest 12.4 patch level or the latest 13.4 patch level will then see the new file in their matching version directories respectively.

    Bear in mind that backports to older LTS releases only are made for "very important fixes", so conceptually this will only ever apply to "Important" type ReST files, and only in rare exemptions to "Breaking" types.

The main goal of this approach is to have a consistent state of changelog files across branches. Changelog files are added to the oldest release branch where a change has been backported to, thus basically the first TYPO3 version where a change is visible. Changelog files from older releases are never deleted in younger branches.

Old changelog files are still rendered in Admin Tools > Upgrade > View Upgrade Documentation and are connected to the extension scanner at Admin Tools > Upgrade > View Upgrade Documentation. In our example above, the main branch contains all changelog files for any prior TYPO3 LTS release (13.4.x, 12.4.x).

Only changelog files in actively maintained LTS and sprint releases will be revised/maintained, and always kept with the same content across all branches.

Filename convention

<type>-<forgeIssueNumber>-<UpperCamelCaseDescription>.rst
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For example

Deprecation-95800-GeneratingPublicURLForPrivateAssetFiles.rst
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File content

Like other documentation, changelog files are done in ReST, see ReST Cheat sheet: Using reStructuredText in TYPO3 Documentation for more details.

  • A headline and a unique identifier (UNIX timestamp by convention) needs to be present
  • A link to an issue number (forge) needs to be present
  • All types contain a "Description" section that should give a short summary on which Core part was affected by the change.
  • All types apart from "Important" contain an "Impact" section that describes the possible impact of a change. An example is "Frontend output may change", "Configuration of xy is easier" or "Backend will throw a fatal error".
  • Types "Deprecation" and "Breaking" contain an "Affected installations" section that describes when and if a TYPO3 instance is affected by a change. Example: "Extension xy is in use" or "TypoScript functionality xy is used" or "System is based on PHP 8.2".
  • Types "Deprecation" and "Breaking" contain a "Migration" section to describe best practices and code examples (before/after) on how to cope with a specific change.
  • All types contain a list of tags, see below.

Tagging

To provide the possibility to filter ReST files by topics, it is mandatory to equip every .rst file with at least two tags. As a rule of thumb a file should have no more than five tags. Please limit yourself to the list provided below. If you are in dearly need to introduce a new tag, you must also add it to the list (and explain it) in this file as a reference for everyone.

The tag list should be located at the end of a ReST file prefixed with the index keyword, example: .. index:: Backend, JavaScript, NotScanned.

List of all possible tags:

Backend
Affects behavior or rendering of the TYPO3 Backend.
CLI
Affects CommandLine Interface (Commands/Shell) functionality.
Database
Modifies behavior of the database abstraction or introduces or remove/add new fields.
FAL
Affects the File Abstraction Layer.
FlexForm
Affects FlexForm functionality.
Fluid
Affects behavior of Fluid, like introducing new tags or modify already established ones (attributes, special processing).
Frontend
Affect the behavior or rendering of the TYPO3 Frontend.
LocalConfiguration
Affects the system/settings.php or the subordinated system/additional.php.
JavaScript
Affects changes in the JavaScript-API (mostly Backend-related).
PHP-API
Affects implementations of mandatory changes of the TYPO3 API available in PHP.
RTE
Affects the RTE functionality (CKEditor).
TCA
Affects Table Configuration Array processing or new/changed options.
TSConfig
Affects the PageTS or UserTS (mind the exact casing of this tag, not "TSconfig"), like new or changed options, or changes in processing.
TypoScript
Affects alterations to TypoScript settings or modifies the behavior of TypoScript itself. Frontend TypoScript only.
YAML
Affects YAML configuration syntax, like new or changed configuration keys or handling of YAML-specific features.
ext:xyz
Changes on extension xyz. Please refer to this tag only when changing system extensions.

Furthermore, exactly one of the following tags must be added for all Deprecation and Breaking ReST files:

NotScanned
If this ReST file is not covered by the extension scanner at all.
PartiallyScanned
If some parts of the deprecated / removed functionality can be found by the extension scanner.
FullyScanned
If usages of all deprecated / removed functionality this ReST file is about can be found by the extension scanner. This tag is used by the extension scanner to mark a ReST file as "You are not affected by this in your codebase" if it does not find a match in extensions.

The automatic CI/commithook integration (see Build/Scripts/validateRstFiles.php in the TYPO3 GIT repository) will flag/report some common errors in ReST files, like:

  • Some (basic) errors in ReST syntax
  • Missing title or structural errors (missing issue number)
  • Missing unique identifier
  • Missing tags

Local rendering

The documentation can be locally rendered with the Docker container of the documentation team (hint: use a bash alias for this locally):

# Execute this from the root of the TYPO3 GIT repository
docker run --rm --pull always -v ./:/project/ \
  ghcr.io/typo3-documentation/render-guides:latest \
  --config=typo3/sysext/core/Documentation typo3/sysext/core/Documentation
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As of now, you can only render the full changelog documentation, not a single changelog file on its own. The rendered HTML docs will be placed in directory ./Documentation-GENERATED-temp/ for manual verification.

Details can be found on: Rendering the Documentation folder locally with Docker