Developers Meeting on Thurs, December 12, 2024

Time/Location

12 Dec 2024 from 15:00-16:00 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. DSpace at OR2025 - Open Repositories 2025 Call for Proposals. Proposals Due on December 18 January 13.
  2. DSpace 9.0 release (due May 2025)
     1. 9.0 Board is created: https://github.com/orgs/DSpace/projects/31/
     2. Early ideas/brainstorms captured at DSpace Release 9.0 Status
  3. DSpace 8.1 / 7.6.3 releases (date not yet finalized)
     1. As discussed the last few weeks, we'd like to push out bug-fixes & performance improvements to 8.x and 7.6.x.  A few mentioned priorities...
     2. "Infinite Load Times when editing/browsing Items" https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/3677 (Merged to "main". PRs for 8.x/7.x still open)
     3. Using both public/private REST API URLs for better performance (Frontend PR: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/3358, Backend PR: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/9856)
  4. Updates on DockerHub rate limits / throttling issues: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/10092
  5. Ongoing Discussions:
     1. High CPU with DSpace 7 SSR: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/3110
     2. Simplifying the Installation Process: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/3184
  6. Other topics
     1. (Add topics here)
• Board Review:
  • 9.0 Project Board - Review PRs collaboratively or Assign new PRs to volunteers to code review and/or test.
  • Backlog Board - Are there any tickets here stuck in the "Triage" column?  We'd like to keep this column as small as possible.
  • 8.x and 7.6.x Maintenance Board - Known bugs can be found here, along with any backported bug fixes.
• Upcoming Topics: (Let us know if there are topics you want to discuss in future weeks)
  
  • Discussion: how to keep message catalogues in sync? https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/3334
  • Discussion/proposal around refactoring and simplifying Live Import and External Data frameworks: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/9758
    (nothing concrete yet but would be great to get thoughts added to this issue and maybe find some collaborators)

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 
• Kim Shepherd 
• Nicholas Woodward 
• Regrets: Scholaris Team

Current Work

Project Boards

• DSpace 9.0 board: https://github.com/orgs/DSpace/projects/31
• DSpace 8.x and 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 9.0

To be decided by DSpace Steering Group with feedback from Leadership Group. 

Early brainstorms at DSpace Release 9.0 Status.  Please feel free to add your own brainstorms or link in tickets that you wish to be considered. 

Goals for 8.1 / 7.6.3

Deadline is TBD for both 8.1 and 7.6.3.  Bug fix releases do not have fixed/scheduled deadlines. Instead, the developer team will determine when to create a release based on the significance of the issues to solve. (e.g. If major issues are fixed, then a bug fix release will occur more rapidly.  If minor issues are found, then a bug fix release may be delayed until sufficient fixes have been made to warrant a release)

• Bug/security fixes only.  These minor releases will not include any new features.
  • New "themeable components" (for dspace-angular) are allowed in bug fix releases, provided that they don't significantly modify component behavior or similar.
  • Accessibility fixes are also allowed in bug fix releases, provided they don't significantly modify component behavior or similar.
• Bug fix PRs should be created against "main" branch where possible. The "main" branch has the most strict code style rules. (i.e. PRs created against dspace-7_x  are becoming more difficult to port forward.)
• Per our support policy, bug fixes are only guaranteed to be ported back to 8.x.  That said, where possible, we'll try to backport bug fixes (especially significant ones) to 7.6.x.
  • Keep in mind, if a specific bug fix is important to you in 7.6.x, then it is best to create two PRs (one for main and one for "dspace-7_x").  If you are able to provide a backport version of the PR, then we will merge it alongside the "main" branch version.
  • NOTE: In many scenarios, a backport to "dspace-8_x" should be possible to automate using the "port to [branch]" labels & the "Port merged Pull Request" GitHub Action

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

Dev Meeting Schedule

• Next Thursday, Dec 19, will be the last dev meeting for this year
• First meeting of 2025 is scheduled for Jan 9

DSpace at OR25

• The proposal deadline has been extended to Jan 13
• The main proposals we are submitting are on the wiki page

9.0 Release Schedule

• The schedule has now been finalized (see top of this page)

Docker Request Issues

• We have been removed from open-source access to Docker 
• Tim has reapplied, we are waiting for a response from Docker
• This has impacted Tim's work in terms of testing and merging
• We can currently merge only 2-4 PRs / day
• Tim has worked on a solution to become less dependent on DockerHub by building Docker images against the GitHub Container Registry to avoid hitting rate limits in DockerHub
• Question from Kim: do we need to copy every single build over to DockerHub or only main images (for releases)?
  • Not necessarily, if we use the GitHub container registry, we may not need to push as much to DockerHub as we used to
  • For example: We may be able to exclude pushing test images (e.g. "dspace-test") to DockerHub, or even just push release images (dspace-8.0, dspace-7.6.2, etc)
• Question: are there valid alternatives to DockerHub?
  • Yes, Google, Amazon, others have them, but they are not free; DockerHub seems to be the main registry used by open-source
• If anyone has knowledge of a viable alternative, please let Tim know
• Pascal researched the Google registry, but their free plan does not work within the capacity load we need

8.1 / 7.6.3 Release

• Releases planned for mid to end of January
• Infinite load time issues: has been merged to main; just need to get the last PR merged 
• Public / Private Rest API URLs (frontend and backend PRs): still waiting on testing and minor clean-up from someone at 4Science
  • If you have a place you can test this, feedback would be greatly appreciated, please add comments

Ongoing Discussions

• High CPU: A lot of performance fixes have come onto the 9.0 Release Board recently
• Briefly went through individual PRs on 9.0 Release Board related to performance issues
  • #9869: Kim will help out with this one
  • #10030: If anyone is interested in helping this along, please assign yourself to the PR
  • #3682: Additional testers and feedback would be welcome
  • #3694: Would ideally like to add this to new 7.x and 8.x versions; Art volunteered and was assigned
  • #3701: If anyone is interested in helping this move along, feel free to help out with testing and reviewing
  • #3709: currently not configurable; testers could help identify whether or not this needs to be configurable in some way
  • #10076: This could be beneficial to look at for 7.6.3 and 8.1; welcome reviewers and testers
  • #10089: Please try this one out if you have time
  • #9760: This looks ready to be merged; will merge this on Monday latest
  • #10057: This looks good, but will give a little more time to make sure this works ok before merging it
• The sooner we can cut down on this list, the sooner we can release 8.1 and 7.6.3

9.0 Board

• There is a lot of work going on on the angular side we need testers for 
  • #3506: This is still in a testable state; need feedback on the success of the bootstrap upgrade & realign
    • #3717 builds off of #3506 (Upgrade to Angular 18)
    • Tim labeled this as "high-priority"
• #3613: would like to get more reviewers on this; would like several testers to make sure the new accessibility settings work for everyone

Action items