There will be no DSpace Developer Meeting on Thursday, November 28, as that day is Thanksgiving holiday in USA. We will resume our Dev meetings the following week on Thursday, December 5.
Tim is out of the office the week of Nov 25-29. He returns to the office on Monday, Dec 2.
New Feature Development Deadlines
Feature PR Creation Deadline: Friday, February 21, 2025
Feature PR Review/Test Deadline: Friday, March 14
Feature PR Merge Deadline: Friday, March 28
9.0 Release Candidate: Friday, April 4
9.0 Testathon: April 7-18 (two weeks)
9.0 Translation updates: April 7-18 (during Testathon)
Bug Fix Deadlines
Bug Fix PR Creation Deadline: Friday, May 2
Bug Fix PR Merge Deadline: Friday, May 16
Documentation & Release Week: May 19-23
9.0 Release Announced: Monday, May 26, 2025
Agenda
Discussion Topics - If you have a topic you'd like to have added to the agenda, please just add it.
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?
It should be considered "mostly final". We will finalize in next week's Dev Mtg (simply because some key developers are missing today)
Reminder of OR2025 call for proposals. Send in your proposals by Dec 18 for any talks/workshops/webinars you may want to present
DSpace 8.1 / 7.6.3 releases
Date of release not finalized. It's essentially "as soon as possible".
There's been a LOT of recent PRs related to performance fixes. Tim would like to see those reviewed (tested / code reviewed) before we release 8.1, as they may be beneficial to add to 8.1
Questions about whether this should also include basic Flyway migrations to ensure the new constraint is properly enforced & doesn't cause errors for existing users