Flow 2.0 Beta 1

The TYPO3 community is delighted to announce the release of TYPO3 Flow 2.0 beta 1. Less than four months after releasing 1.1, this version introduces more than 65 new features and contains almost 400 improvements and bug fixes.

A New Name and a New Number

When we started working on this version, TYPO3 Flow was still called FLOW3 and we planned to release it as "1.2". In the meantime not only the website and most of the references to the old name have been updated - we also renamed the PHP namespace "\TYPO3\FLOW3\*" to "\TYPO3\Flow\*". Following the semantic version numbering approach, this version turned into a major release, as it clearly breaks backwards compatibility through the name change alone.

But even the name change put aside, Flow 2.0 contains so many new features and major improvements which justify a new major release, that we simply could not stick to the planned version number.

Upgrading from FLOW3 1.1

Adjusting a FLOW3 1.1 application to Flow 2.0 only involves a few simple steps. Don't be worried by the fact that virtually all class names have changed due to the new product name – we have an app for that. Flow's code migration parses your code and adjusts it where necessary. All changes are automatically put into a Git commit on its own, so you can review or revert modifications at any time.

Karsten has prepared a comprehensive step-by-step upgrading guide with all important adjustments, including the necessary Doctrine migrations. It can be found in the Upgrading.txt file in the root of your Flow project after installation through composer. For those that are not yet at that point, it is available online as well.

Composer

Flow 2.0 comes with a whole new package management based on Composer, the de-facto standard for PHP dependency management. Take a few minutes reading the Composer documentation and getting familiar with its concepts. While it takes a few days getting into the new workflow, you will love the possibilities it gives for using third-party libraries listed on packagist.org.

Downloading Flow 2.0 beta 1

Starting with Flow 2.0 we don't plan to release tar or zip archives anymore (unless you convince us that this is a bad idea). Instead, you can install and upgrade through the simple composer commands. Even if you have never used Composer before, does it get any simpler than this?

curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
php composer.phar create-project --dev --stability beta typo3/flow-base-distribution

Give us Feedback before Christmas

Most Flow core team members have been using Flow 2.0 in production already and we are quite confident that it is faster and more stable than all previous versions. We ask you to test it thoroughly with your own projects. Please give us feedback or ask questions.