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Notes

1. Housekeeping and Updates

• Daylight Savings Reminder:

  • Next week’s meeting will be at 15:00 UTC, which means a temporary shift by one hour for North American participants.

  • Europe remains unchanged.

  • Meeting will settle at 15:00 UTC going forward until next year.

  • Tim will post reminders in Slack and agenda notes.

• Merger Discussions:

  • Strategic and technical groups are finalizing initial reports for Steering.

  • Expectation: potential decision within a month.

  • Steering and Leadership will review feedback and either return questions or move toward decision-making.

2. Main Topic — Modularization Work (NX vs Angular Workspaces)

A. Art Lowel’s Presentation

• Demonstrated: Angular CLI workspace-based prototype.

• Created a customization library using standard Angular CLI commands (ng generate library).

• Custom components (e.g., featured items component) added as proof of concept.

• Integration tested with the main DSpace Angular app.

Key Points from Art’s Demo:

• Each library is generated quickly (1–2 minutes setup).

• Libraries can be built together or separately, but currently configured to build together for convenience.

• Suggests moving main app code into libraries to respect boundaries and improve modularization.

• Noted issue: components in main app still require relative imports rather than library imports.

• Recommends separating tests and scripts into dedicated libraries.

B. Comparative Discussion: Angular Workspaces vs NX

C. Technical Issues Identified

• Custom Webpack build is deprecated.
  → Consensus to migrate to ESBuild (used by Angular and NX).

• Test structures should be split from modules.

• Scripts folder violates module boundaries → needs conversion into its own library.

• Automated index file generation (using Barrelsby or similar) required; currently manual.

3. Opinions and Leanings

Art Lowel:

• Slightly prefers Angular workspaces (simpler, no extra dependency).

• Open to NX if consensus supports it.

• Emphasizes removing Webpack and modularizing either way.

Giuseppe Digilio (4Science):

• Prefers NX due to tooling and caching advantages.

• Main priority: agreement on moving to library-based architecture, regardless of framework.

• Later clarified preference to modularize gradually, not by moving everything into one library.

Kim Shepherd:

• Asked whether NX’s opinionated design could restrict flexibility or improve consistency.

• Concerned about potential over-restriction for custom development.

Sasha and Martin:

• Both opposed adding NX — adds tooling complexity to already heavy frontend stack.

Tim Donohue:

• Neutral, leans toward simplicity.

• Concerned about increasing complexity for new developers.

• Wants both prototypes (NX and workspaces) available for direct comparison before deciding.

4. Decisions and Agreements

✅ Agreed:

1. Move DSpace frontend toward a modular, library-based structure.

2. Proceed to merge current PR (library-based refactoring: core, config, utils) after resolving conflicts.

3. Create tickets to:

   • Replace custom Webpack with ESBuild.

   • Refactor scripts into a library.

   • Move app-level code into libraries (future step).

4. Draft PR of Art’s workspace prototype will be shared for side-by-side comparison with NX PR.

   1. Art shared link to PR at the end of the meeting: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/4783

⚙️ Pending Decisions:

• Whether to adopt NX or stick with Angular CLI workspaces.

• How to handle app directory structure (single app module vs multiple smaller libraries).

5. Next Steps / Action Items

6. Summary

• All agree on moving away from monolithic Angular frontend toward modular structure.

• Core debate remains NX vs Angular CLI workspaces.

• Workstreams are now clearly defined:

  • Merge existing PR

  • Replace Webpack

  • Prototype comparison

  • Decide final architecture for DSpace 10