VuFind Developers Call Minutes: June 28, 2011

Attending: Filipe Bento, Peter Brandt, Gislaine Hamelin, Demian Katz, Till Kinstler, Rita Liu, Tuan Nguyen, Luke O'Sullivan, Michelle Suranofsky

• VUFIND-274 – Eoghan's full-text indexing BeanShell script has been committed to trunk in a slightly improved form; Demian will look into creating a Java version for inclusion in the next SolrMarc release as well.
• VUFIND-386 – Another enhanced Aleph driver work-in-progress is available here; keep in mind that this was shared before the minor driver interface changes made in r4013.
• VUFIND-406 – Demian has built the upgrade tools for the 1.2 release; at this point, all that remains is language translation (and any bug fixes that might turn up while we wait).
• VUFIND-414 – Demian has posted a patch to block illegal combinations of records from the bulk export function; this should reduce (but not entirely prevent) user confusion. We still need to work on adding better export support to the record drivers themselves. This patch will be committed after VuFind 1.2 is released – it is being held back since it adds another string to the language file, and we have already begun updating translations for the 1.2 release.
• VUFIND-417 – Some annoying side effects of Solr's stopword feature are discussed on this ticket; it's worth a read.
• VUFIND-418 – This ticket contains some discussion of ways of overriding VuFind configuration settings on a site-by-site basis. If you have opinions on the matter, please read and comment.

Solr 3.2 has just been released, so VuFind's Solr 3.1 branch is now out of date; Demian will take care of further upgrading things after 1.2 has been released and we merge the updated Solr code into the trunk.

Bob Haschart has returned from vacation, so hopefully we will have some plans for the next official SolrMarc release by the next dev call; fortunately, this is not an urgent priority since we still have to finish up the 1.2 release before we need to worry about this.

Demian has continued making progress on the VuFind 2.0 branch. Search results are now much more functional, including custom search type, sorting and faceting functionality. The record view is now also under construction.

Right now, the focus is still on getting basic functionality in place; there's still a lot of work to do – lightboxes, ILS integration, etc., etc.

One item worth discussing: extensibility. How much is the right amount? How much performance are we willing to sacrifice?

A rough plan for future development:

• Until the release of VuFind 1.2, Demian will continue work on basic functionality in the PHP portion of VuFind 2.0. This development will continue to rely on an existing VuFind 1.x installation to provide a Solr index for it to communicate with.
• Once VuFind 1.3 development begins and the trunk is updated to Solr 3.x, Demian will begin incorporating external components like Solr, SolrMarc, command-line tools and Phing/Maven files into the VuFind 2.0 branch.
• As soon as the VuFind 2.0 branch has all the basic components necessary to stand alone, Demian will set up continuous integration so that we can begin polishing up the code (conforming to coding standards, writing unit tests).
  • Important note on coding standards: the coding standards for Zend framework are currently somewhat unsettled; they're using a slightly modified version of the PEAR standard for now and are waiting for the PEAR2 specs to be fully defined. We might as well follow suit – that way we won't need to make changes against our existing code's standards.

Areas where other people can help (volunteers welcome!):

• Writing unit tests. The new architecture should make it much easier to test code than the old design. We should aim for high test coverage, and we should start building tests very soon to ensure that the infrastructure really works. Since Demian is currently aiming for basic functionality, there are probably many minor details that don't work right – this should make test building a rewarding experience, since there are certainly bugs that need to be caught.
• Building themes. Demian is currently only porting the blueprint theme. The old YUI themes should probably be abandoned to cut down on maintenance costs. However, if anyone is able to extend the blueprint theme with new CSS and minor template changes in order to replicate the look and feel of the old classic/default themes, that would be very helpful.
• Critiquing code. Constructive criticism is very welcome!

Tuan has finished working on York's mobile theme and will contribute a generic version to the trunk in the near future.

Luke is making good progress on the bulk action code originally begun by Tuan. It currently still works only in the blueprint theme, and Demian still plans to do a more thorough code review to see if he can spot any minor problems, but all major issues seem to be resolved at this point. Anyone interested in testing the patch should get in touch with Luke and/or Demian. The current expectation is that we will commit this to the trunk shortly after the release of VuFind 1.2; even if the non-blueprint theming is not yet complete, having the base logic committed will make those cosmetic finishing touches less complicated to achieve.

Michelle agrees that the front-end piece of the driver should go in the VuFind trunk, although the back-end needs to remain a separate project for legal reasons. Several versions of the front-end piece are floating around, but she proposes putting Tuan's version into trunk. Tuan will commit soon and Michelle will test.

There was a request on the mailing list to move the meeting time to 11am. There were no objections, so we will try 11am for the next call. We can move back to 10am in the future if we need to.

Peter Brandt asked some questions about authentication and holds; he is using Symphony, so the upcoming VuFind 1.2 holds functionality is not yet available… but Tuan is working on it.

The next call will be Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 11am Eastern Daylight Time (GMT - 4:00).