Meeting Information

Date and Time: March 27, 2025, 17:00-18:00UTC

Meeting link: See calendar invitation

Attendees

• Ben Bosman 
• Giuseppe Digilio (4Science) 
  
• Lieven Droogmans 
• Damian Józefowski 
• Katharina Kaiser 
• Emmanuel Pastor 
• Kim Shepherd 
• Mark H. Wood 

Ex-Officio:

• Tim Donohue  

  Note taker

Regrets

• Holger Lenz - Attending DSpace Praxistreffen
• Nicholas Woodward 
• Andrea Bollini (4Science) 

Agenda

Notes

• Homework Review
  • Reviewed the Early Draft of the Technical Strategy Document.  This document is purposely private at this time, because it's very rough brainstorms/notes regarding the merger.  Once the team discusses those brainstorms and formalizes any early ideas, then this document may be shared for feedback.
    • Reviewed shared, High Level Vision in document (summarized from last meeting's discussion)
    • Reviewed potential challenges we see to achieving the vision (summarized from last meeting's discussion)
    • Reviewed long-term product brainstorms (possible rough vision for DSpace post merger) (summarized from last meeting's discussion)
• Discussion of Potential Merger Scenarios captured in Technical Strategy Document.  At this time, we are interested in any merger scenario idea.  We did not have a chance to discuss pros/cons of each.  Some early ideas include:
  • Adopt DSpace-CRIS as DSpace
  • Port DSpace-CRIS into DSpace (in one or more Pull Requests)
  • Incremental "CRIS-ification" of DSpace. Over multiple DSpace releases, merge DSpace-CRIS code into DSpace little-by-little.
  • Controlled Convergence of DSpace & DSpace-CRIS. Gradual merger via parallel maintenance of both (for a period of time) while code is merged little by little. Parallel maintenance ends when final merged version is achieved.
• Question: In one of our first meetings, we asked everyone to fill out a list of "Questions" and "Comments or Observations" about the potential merger.  We need to make sure this information is not lost, as it may be useful in future discussions or in the Technical Strategy Document we're working on
  • Agreed.  Tim will copy this information in the the current Technical Strategy Document as an Appendix for us to reference as needed in upcoming discussions
• Question: Can we obtain or build a list of all features unique to DSpace-CRIS?  This came up during a DSpace Praxistreffen session. Current DSpace-CRIS users want to ensure the features they care about are also into the merged DSpace.  Additionally there were some older DSpace-CRIS v6 features that haven't been recreated in DSpace-CRIS v7 or v8.
  • We agreed this list of DSpace-CRIS-specific features would be very useful for discussions. 
  • Tim will start the list based on the Sept 2024 Report to Steering (as this had a partial list in the Appendix)
  • 4Science team will help add to the list, along with anyone else who knows/uses DSpace-CRIS
  • Goal is to have a (mostly) complete list of DSpace-CRIS features which do not exist in DSpace.  (We also may include older DSpace-CRIS v6 features that no longer exist, as these may be features we'd want to consider recreating in the future)
• Regarding DSpace-CRIS features: Previously we talked about ensuring that all DSpace-CRIS latest feature are included in this merger (i.e. avoiding any feature loss from before to after the merger).
  • Tim will write this into the Technical Strategy Document to make it clear this is a goal
  • We do need to also be aware that there are a few duplicative features in DSpace-CRIS and DSpace, where the same feature works in different ways.  We need to identify these features, and may need to chose one approach for the merged product (and provide a migration path as necessary).
• While looking at the Sept 2024 Report to Steering, we also may want to re-run the analysis of how much code differences there are between DSpace-CRIS and DSpace (as of Aug 2024, it was about 700K lines of code difference, which is roughly the size of two major DSpace releases).  This difference may have chanced since then, so it would be best to update numbers.
• Question: Can we better understand the amount of effort it takes for DSpace-CRIS to update itself to the latest DSpace release?  What is the process that the DSpace-CRIS team uses to "sync" up with the latest DSpace? This might provide useful insight that could be relevant as we look at merger scenarios.
  • Others agree.  Might be a good topic for an upcoming meeting to discuss this process with the 4Science team.
• Question: Does DSpace-CRIS really include all of DSpace code?
  • Yes. All code in DSpace is also in DSpace-CRIS.  However, DSpace-CRIS does "disable" some code or have an alternative implementation. 
  • For instance, even though DSpace-CRIS uses a different relationships model, the DSpace relationship model still exists in the DSpace-CRIS codebase. However, in DSpace-CRIS, the DSpace relationship model code is no longer referenced/used...instead code has been updated to call the DSpace-CRIS relationship model.
• Getting access to the DSpace-CRIS demo site for all our team members.
  • 4Science wants to give everyone a login, so that we can all play with the DSpace-CRIS demo site to better understand the differences
  • Giuseppe will reach out to get everyone setup with a login, using your email.

Action Items

• Tim Donohue : Copy "Questions, Comments and Observations" to our Technical Strategy Document in an appendix for future reference
• Tim Donohue : Copy (old) list of DSpace-CRIS features into Technical Strategy Document as another appendix.  Ask the rest of the team to enhance it.
• Giuseppe Digilio (4Science) : Setup a login for each team members in the DSpace-CRIS demo site.  Ideally these accounts will have Admin privileges, if possible, just to allow us to see all the features of the system.