If merger occurs, it won't occur until 10.0 at the earliest.
If merger occurs, the final product will still be called DSpace & be community controlled. Essentially, DSpace will be adding all the features of DSpace-CRIS.
Overall goal is to bring our communities together & work as one.
Pitch for new PR checklist item: It would be great for devs to have a way to follow new tools, libraries, concepts and patterns introduced with each DSpace release (e.g. if I introduced a new ng dependency for dspace-angular, or the first use of JDK15/17 'record' in java). To keep track of these things while keeping extra effort for devs and release teams at a minimum, I thought we could consider a new PR checklist item: "If I have introduced a new library / framework / pattern / concept, I have written a short clear description of the new concept in the PR description with links to source documentation, for inclusion in release notes" (or something like that) - when we merge, we can copy the note to a wiki page in preparation for the release along with a link to the PR that introduced it. - Kim S.
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.
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)
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")
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 PRsshould 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?
Talk or Panel or Workshop regarding the DSpace & DSpace-CRIS "Intent to Merge". This would provide updates on any decisions that have been made. (Ideally at this time, we would know if the merger will occur in 10.0 or not)
Overall, next steps are just to form the planning groups (once Steering has finalized their charges). No exact date yet from Steering on when the planning groups will be formed, but hopefully sometime in November.
The exact timelines for a decision on the merger are unclear. These planning groups will need to be given time to provide feedback & recommend a roadmap. Unlikely that any merger decision will be rapid, but ideally a decision will be made before the 9.0 release on the priorities for 10.0. So, if the merger would happen in 10.0, we'd know in the next 6 months. But, if a decision is not ready by then, that would imply that the merger is more complex and will not occur in 10.0.
There will be opportunities to volunteer for one of the merger planning groups (if you are interested). However, the groups may need to be scoped in terms of size (in order to get things done). Tim notes though that he'd want the groups to be as transparent as possible (public meeting notes, etc) to allow others to follow along and give ongoing feedback. Updates would also be brought back to this DevMtg.
Draft 9.0 Release Schedule feedback
Jan 15, 2025 is very soon . This may be difficult to achieve for new features
Tim offered to bump this back a week along with everything else
Why are we aiming for April? Can we aim for May?
April avoids the stress of Open Repositories. Sometimes OR is in early June, which makes a May release stressful/difficult. We can lose attention as people are preparing for OR.
We all realize that 9.0 planning started way too late. The key issue is that 8.0 was late, and 7.6.x was late before it.
We're trying to get ourselves back on a "reasonable yearly schedule" and April is the ideal month for a release. This does unfortunately mean that 9.0 will likely include less features. It's going to need to be a more tightly scoped release anyways. See updated 9.0 feature scoping at DSpace Release 9.0 Status
How to decide which new features are allowed in 9.0?
We may need to delegate some of these decisions to the upcoming Merger Technical Planning Group. Ideally, any new features added in 9.0 would not make a potential DSpace-CRIS merger more difficult . What "more difficult" means might need to be defined by this planning group, so that we can better answer this question
Overall, if the feature aligns with priorities listed at DSpace Release 9.0 Status, then it can be added in 9.0
If a feature does not align with those priorities, it may need more discussion in the planning group to ensure it doesn't make a potential merger more difficult
Action items
Tim Donohue will create road map for 9.0 development