Developers Meeting on Thurs, February 20, 2025

Time/Location

20 Feb 2025 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

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.
1. DSpace & DSpace-CRIS potential merger discussions
  1. DSpace and DSpace-CRIS Planning Groups - wiki pages to follow along with ongoing discussions.
2. DSpace 9.0 release (see release schedule above)
  1. TOMORROW is our "Feature PR Creation Deadline". Any outstanding features that will not make the deadline?
  2. "feature" PRs already on our board - Ensure your PRs are updated (no merge conflicts). Assigning reviewers to these PRs.
3. Other topics
  1. (Add your topic)
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)
- Ongoing Discussions (temporarily put on hold until there are updates):
  1. High CPU with DSpace 7 SSR: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/3110 (This should be alleviated through several SSR related performance improvements coming in 7.6.3 and 8.1)
  2. Simplifying the Installation Process: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/3184
- 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

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.

Priorities listed at DSpace Release 9.0 Status.

Goals for 8.2 / 7.6.4

Deadline is TBD for both 8.2 and 7.6.4. 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

9.0 Release Schedule

Feature PR deadline is tomorrow, Feb 21, 2025
- Anything that comes in after that will be tabled to 10.0
- If anything is running late, let Tim know as soon as possible
Next deadlines after that is March 14 - initial review of Feature PRs - and March 28, Feature PR Merge Deadline

Discussion Topics

First Meeting of the DSpace & DSpace-CRIS Technology Planning Group happened last week Thursday
- This meeting was mainly to get everyone up to speed, no other news or reports at this point

Board Review

Needs Reviewer Assigned column: Tim flagged a few PRs as high priority (mostly code relating to upgrades) to try to make sure they go into 9.0
- Many of these PRs have merge conflicts, please work on these to resolve the conflicts so that we can make these easier to test
Want to go through the following three PRs in order (as each impacts the other)
1. Upgrade to Bootstrap 5 (#3506)
  - Already assigned to Giuseppe and Tim
  - Moved to "Under Review" column
  - This upgrade impacts the themes
2. Upgrade to Angular (#3717)
  - Assigned to Giuseppe
3. Migration to Angular Control Syntax (#3997)
  - Would like to get testers for these
  - Tim assigned to this one in addition to Art
  - This one shouldn't impact the themes
  - Giuseppe: they will resolve the merge conflict once the other two have been merged
#10432: Gets us off the old date classes on the backend in Java, which should resolve the time zone problems that we occasionally see in DSpace
- Does not work and is not testable yet; Tim will try to work on this tomorrow so that it's testable
- Mark has volunteered and been assigned
- Kim Shepherd has volunteered to test dates and been assigned
- Nick can also test whenever it's ready, has been assigned
#3994: Affects the way the menus are structured in the Angular UI
- Not as high priority, but want to keep it in mind
- Would come after the Bootstrap Angular Control Flow, in a week or two
- Giuseppe volunteered and was assigned; Tim also assigned himself
Other non high priority PRs:
- #9844: Why was Thymeleaf chosen? Pascal will answer the question in the discussion section
  - Need to continue the discussion on this, Tim added to this one
- #3349, #3355, #9849: all related PRs around ORCID Login
  - Tim added, Art added
- #3357: Does this add default entities for products and patents? Yes, it seems like it does
  - Do we have any concerns about adding products and patents to DSpace? Do we see this as a good fit for the DSpace data model?
  - Several of these ORCID-related PRs come out of the ORCID community, funded by ORCID
  - Need reviewers or testers for this - There are already some testers who are looking at this
  - Tim assigned to himself
  - If anyone is interested, please test this
- #9848: skipped for now
- #9866:
  - Need to get the merge conflict resolved on these PRs from the developer
  - Yury, Kim was assigned
- #10407 and #3984: Yury, Martin added
- #9912, #3507: potentially conflicts with DSpace-CRIS, skipped for now
- #3338: needs to have merge conflict resolved by developer, assigned to Alex; Tim will review backend PR (#9882)
- #3540: allows to put geospatial data in metadata to be rendered in a map on search results or item page
  - treated as stand-alone, not dependent on other PR
  - need merge conflicts resolved and testers
  - backend is small, front-end a bit larger
  - Giuseppe, Tim will review; Eike volunteered as tester (GitHub handle: Leano1998)
- #3722: needs testers and review; related to edit metadata fields
  - Giuseppe volunteered as reviewer
- #3740: Adding a contact telephone field to the UI
  - Not high priority, will table this one for the moment
- #10129: make text extraction into XML document from PDF possible
  - Also not high priority; related issue is #10105
  - If anyone is interested, reviewers and testers are welcome
  - Mark: ask contributor for explanation on how this is intended to be used
- #10170: Tim assigned himself
- #3785: Probably not high priority, but this is very small
  - Giuseppe volunteered as reviewer
- #10237: try to find a way to allow the submission form to autocomplete values based on existing metadata values
  - If anyone interested, additional testers or reviewers are welcome (Damian already assigned)
  - Is using the SOLR suggestion authority?
  - Giuseppe volunteered to review
- #10294, #300, #3882: Yury and Tim added
- #10333: No volunteers at the moment, not high priority
  - Tim added himself
- #3987 and #10410: Tim added himself; need additional testers and reviewers
- #10431 and #4016: allowing ability to have labels for alternative content
There are still things in the "Under Review" column, please take care of those and final PRs created for features