Developers Meeting on Thurs, May 16, 2024

Time/Location

16 May 2024 from 14:00-15:00 UTC

Location: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/my/dspace?pwd=RTk4QUhISnhPRi9YenVrTFJKbDllQT09 (Meeting ID: 502 527 3040).  Passcode: dspace

• More connection options available at DSpace Meeting Room

Agenda

• Discussion Topics - If you have a topic you'd like to have added to the agenda, please just add it. 
  1. 8.0 Testathon Wrap-Up (and continued testing)
     
     1. Bugs reported via Testathon:
        1. https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/labels/testathon
        2. https://github.com/DSpace/dspace/labels/testathon
  2. OR2024 Developer Meet-Up & Q&A Workshop
     
     1. Wiki page to begin adding topics for discussion: OR2024 DSpace Developer Meet-Up and Q&A
  3. (5-10 mins) Michał Dykas (and team) has suggestions on how to optimize SSR performance based on their experience.
  4. Ongoing Discussion: High CPU with DSpace 7 SSR: https://groups.google.com/g/dspace-tech/c/t4H3jJPq0Ck   
     1. Please suggest improvements/changes on our Performance Tuning DSpace docs (or send to Tim privately)
     2.   Add configuration to disable inlined CSS in SSR: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/2067
     3. Possibly exclude some components from SSR?  E.g. DSpace-CRIS excludes the Search component from SSR as these are not necessary for SEO.  (Need to verify this has no negative impacts on accessibility or similar.)
     4. Is there a way to use Apache "mod_cache" to cache SSR generated pages?
        1. May have a negative impact on download/view statistics (in Solr Statistics) as hits to the Apache cache would not generate view events. We'd need a different way to send these view events to REST API.
  5. DSpace 7.x Maintenance
     1. Should we backport the new /api/security/csrf  REST endpoint used by https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/2886  ?   See also REST Contract: https://github.com/DSpace/RestContract/pull/259
  6. (Other topics?)
• Board Review & assignments:
  • Backlog Board - Are there any tickets here stuck in the "Triage" column?  We'd like to keep this column as small as possible.
  • 8.0 Project Board - Assign new PRs to volunteers to code review and/or test.
  • 7.6.x Project Board - Assign new PRs to volunteers to code review and/or test.
• Upcoming Topics: (Let us know if there are topics you want to discuss in future weeks)
  • None at this time

Attendees

• Tim Donohue 
• Holger Lenz 

• Art Lowel (Atmire) 

• Andrea Bollini (4Science)

• Giuseppe Digilio (4Science) 
• Paulo Graça
• Mark H. Wood 
• Grazia Quercia (4Science)
• Corrado Lombardi (4Science) 
• Julian Timal (eScire) 
• Martin Walk 
• Melissa Anez 
• Oliver Goldschmidt 
• Hrafn Malmquist 
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker 
• Pierre Lasou 

Current Work

Project Boards

• DSpace 8.0 board: https://github.com/orgs/DSpace/projects/27
• DSpace 7.6.x board: https://github.com/orgs/DSpace/projects/29

To quickly find PRs assigned to you for review, visit https://github.com/pulls/review-requested  (This is also available in the GitHub header under "Pull Requests → Review Requests")

Goals for 8.0

This were decided by Steering in their meeting on June 28, 2023.

1. Move forward major features which missed 7.x. 
   1. COAR Notify support (4Science & Harvard): https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/8120 
      1. Development proposal page: Implementation of the COAR Notify protocol in DSpace 8
   2. OpenAIRE integration with notification broker/claim service (4Science)
   3. Porting "REST-Based Quality Control Reports" from old REST API to new one. (U of Laval, Canada)
   4. Duplicate Detection in Submission ported from DSpace-CRIS (The Library Code)
2. Include new features which empower users in the admin UI.  Make things easier for Admins.
3. Accepting community contributions of any 6.x features which missed 7.x
4. Improve documentation, training to allow for greater community contributions.  (Ease setup/install/customization, etc.)
   1. Per DSpace 7 WG meeting on June 29, 2023, this may include dependency upgrades/maintenance (Angular, Spring, Solr, Tomcat, etc).  May also include necessary code updates/refactors to ease in ongoing maintenance. 
5. Release Goal: May 20, 2024
6. In parallel to 8.0, proof of concepts / planning regarding modularization:
   1. Angular : library-based architecture proposal (4Science)
   2. DSpace Preservation-enabled Storage via OCFL (Lyrasis, post-8.0)

Goals for 7.6.2

Deadline is TBD for 7.6.2

• Bug/security fixes only.  Release will occur when sufficient fixes have been made to warrant a release.
  • New "themeable components" (for dspace-angular) are allowed in bug fix releases, provided that they don't significantly modify component behavior or similar.
• Bug fixes should have one Pull Request 
  1. A PR against either the "dspace-7_x" maintenance branch OR the "main" branch.
  2. We will automatically generate a PR against the other branch using the "port to [branch]" labels & the "Port merged Pull Request" GitHub Action
  3. (In the case of complex bug fixes, it is possible this automatic port action will fail. In that situation a manual port PR may need to be created.)

Try "Pull Request Trading" for a quicker review

Do you have a PR stuck in "under review" that you really want to see move forward?  Or maybe it's someone else's PR but you want to get it more attention?

See Trading reviews on Pull Requests for how to get immediate attention to that PR!

Notes

8.0 Testathon Wrap-Up (and continued testing)

Current priority/focus is on the release of version 8.0, goal is to close as many bug tickets as possible within the next two weeks.

• Discussed, reviewed, and assigned high priority bug tickets and PRs (angular and backend) on GitHub.

OR2024 Developer Meet-Up & Q&A Workshop

Tim Donohue will attend the workshop virtually. Topics for discussion can be added at OR2024 DSpace Developer Meet-Up and Q&A

Presentation by Michał Dykas on how to optimize SSR performance

Michał Dykas and PCG team shared challenges and solutions on reducing lag times when dealing with large repositories in DSpace.

• PCG team ran into some scalability/performance issues with a large repository.  Currently documented Performance Tuning DSpace instructions were not helpful enough for a large site
• Developed a way to use Redis for caching (instead of built-in DSpace caching which uses an in-memory lru-cache).  This Redis solution worked well for a large site
• PCG will donate Redis integration code & also make suggestions on improving documentation.  (This Redis approach would be optional, only for sites that need it.  However for larger sites it can help alleviate the need for a large cluster of node instances)
• Slides from PCG presentation