Attending: Filipe Bento, Oliver Goldschmidt, Demian Katz, Ronan McHugh, Sean Purcell, Ernie Simuro
Demian has updated the Phing build script so that VuFind 2's unit tests can be run using either MySQL or PostgreSQL; this should allow us to better maintain cross-database compatibility. Currently all unit tests pass for both databases, but it is possible to find some PostgreSQL-specific problems by manually interacting with the software. We need to improve our test coverage in order to catch all of these problems; Demian and Chris will work on this.
The jquerymobile theme has been completely ported over and also significantly extended.
The statistics code is making significant progress. Data capture is working well, though some of the reports still need a little work.
Demian has begun porting the remaining ILS drivers. Since he is unable to test them, he will send an email to vufind-tech to find volunteers as porting is completed.
Demian has also made progress improving performance by using render() instead of partial() for displaying sub-templates in the views.
Demian has renamed the version number for the initial 2.0 release (due July 2) from “2.0RC1” to “2.0alpha.” Since this initial release is not going to closely resemble the final 2.0 release (due to forthcoming Zend Framework changes), it really shouldn't be called a “release candidate.” However, it will be a feature-complete model demonstrating many of the characteristics of the new VuFind version; it just shouldn't be used in production until it's a bit closer to its final shape!
Demian and Ere had some recent email conversations about version control. Demian is now considering turning on Git in Sourceforge and using that for VuFind 2 development in parallel with Subversion for 1.x. Feedback on this idea is welcome.
No news regarding 1.x, though as noted above, the 2.0 version of jquerymobile adds a significant amount of functionality. Nearly every user-facing page is now supported in either mobile or standard view.
Registration for the summit is now open. See the VuFind Summit 2012 page for more details.
No news this week.
Filipe reminded Demian of a conversation they had last year about encouraging users to comment on/tag records. It might be possible to prompt on log-in based on recently returned items (“please tell us what you thought about…”). If users are more actively creating metadata, this makes it more useful to share it.
User-generated metadata is another thing that would be useful to share centrally. Demian suggested that a linked data approach might be a good way to make this data shareable in a platform-independent way, possibly allowing collaboration with other communities like Blacklight/XC/etc.
Demian is interested in supporting such an effort, though he is not currently able to devote the time necessary to design a whole system.
Demian mentioned his intention to eventually investigate integrating VuFind with the XC Metadata Services Toolkit for authority processing (another of his backburner projects – if anyone is interested in helping with this, feel free to contact him for more information).
The next call will be Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 10am Eastern Daylight Time (14:00 GMT).