Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund

The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.

Developers Meeting on Thurs, Oct 31, 2024

Time/Location

 from 15:00-16:00 UTC

Location: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/my/dspace?pwd=RTk4QUhISnhPRi9YenVrTFJKbDllQT09 (Meeting ID: 502 527 3040).  Passcode: dspace

Meeting time is now 15:00UTC because of Daylight Saving Time ending

Daylight Saving Time is ending soon throughout the world:

  • Europe: DST ended on Oct 27
  • North America: DST ends on Nov 3

Upcoming DSpace Developer Meeting Times:

  • Oct 24 occurred at 14:00UTC
  • Oct 31 at 15:00UTC  (Temporarily, one hour later for North America / anyone still in DST)
  • Nov 7 at 15:00UTC (Back to the same local time for everyone who observes DST)

9.0 Release Schedule (DRAFT)

  • New Feature Development Deadlines
    • Feature PR Creation Deadline: Friday, Jan 25, 2025
    • Feature PR Review/Test Deadline: Friday, Feb 14
    • Feature PR Merge Deadline: Friday, Feb 28
  • 9.0 Release Candidate:  Friday, March 7
  • 9.0 Testathon: March 10-21 (two weeks)
  • 9.0 Translation updates: March 10-21 (during Testathon)
  • Bug Fix Deadlines
    • Bug Fix PR Creation Deadline: Friday, April 4
    • Bug Fix PR Merge Deadline: Friday, April 18
  • Documentation & Release Week: April 21-25 
  • 9.0 Release Announced: Monday, April 28, 2025

Agenda

Attendees

Regrets: Scholaris Team has a meeting conflict this week, see you all next week 👋🏻

Current Work

Project Boards

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

Reminder that because of Daylight Savings Time, the meeting time has shifted from 14:00UTC to 15:00UTC


DSpace at OR2025

  • Tim has created a wiki page
  • CFP is out, due on dec 18
  • Four main ideas came up as possible submissions in last week's meeting
    • A developers meet up (similar to OR2024)
    • Contributing to the DSpace Community
    • Updates on potential merger of DSpace and DSpace-CRIS
    • A general roadmap talk
  • These have not been brought to Steering, once Steering has had a chance to talk about this, there will be more feedback
  • Feel free to add your own ideas for presentations to this page


Release Schedule for 9.0

  • Tim has pushed the timeline back one week (see top of this page)
  • This is still tentative and needs to be run by DCAT (esp. in regards to the Testathon timing)
  • Generally, we want to stick to releasing 9.0 in April, which probably will mean that 9.0 will be a smaller release


Priorities for 9.0

  • Developers are welcome to start working on any of the priorities listed on DSpace Release 9.0 Status
  • Work on the upgrade to Angular 18 & Spring Boot 3.3 should start soon, since this will likely be more time consuming
    • Art Lowel (Atmire) volunteered to work on the Angular 18 update (#3304)
    • Tim will work on the Spring Boot 3.3 upgrade within the greater context of backend dependency updates


Potential merger of DSpace and DSpace-CRIS

  • Currently dropped from the agenda, since we are awaiting feedback from Steering around the formation of the two planning groups: the strategic and technology planning groups
  • As soon as charges for those groups have been finalized, we will need volunteers for those groups


Ongoing discussion

  • No major updates; if anyone is interested in helping out with incentivizing code reviews and pr testing, see wiki page
  • High cpu – still discussions on #3110 ticket; we welcome feedback on this, if anyone is interested in moving some if this forward or testing and providing feedback, please feel free to do so
  • Public/private rest APIs – PRs exist now #9856, 3358; would be great if Guiseppe can clean up the conflict; Tim will test to move this forward
  • Simplifying the installation process – Frontend has already been improved (npm instead of yarn); if ideas for backend, please let Tim know or start working on a brainstorm or proposal


Discussion about correlation ID (#3335)

  • Discussed whether correlation id has any concerns related to GDPR, accidentally tracking personal information (email addresses) in logs
  • The cookie pop-up needs to be updated
  • Probably should have a way to turn email addresses appearing in logs configurable with the option to turn this off
  • Tim will summarize the discussion in the ticket
  • Andrea will help out with updating the cookie; adding better documentation to the cookie and making it optional for users


Discussion around refactoring and simplifying Live Import and External Data frameworks (#9758)

  • Need to investigate how the external data framework and live import interact
  • It may be possible to refactor them together; alternatively, we might find a different/better solution
  • See if there is cleanup work that can be done


Board Review

  • #9703: Tim will add feedback to this ticket after the meeting; Art pointed out that there might be a utility (Apache) that does this already; otherwise, this looks good
  • #3212: Needs testing; Michal Dykas will take a look
  • General Note: Over half of tickets in the "needs reviewers assigned" column are 1 reviewer fixes; encouragement to set aside some time during the week to clean up some low hanging fruit                                             

Action items