VuFind Developers Call Minutes: July 18, 2017

Attending: Leila Gonzales, Chris Hallberg, Demian Katz, Jochen Lienhard, Tod Olson, Brad Patton

• VUFIND-1209 - This ticket (about adding a user ID column to the user table) was resolved some time ago and has just now been closed.
• VUFIND-1222 - This ticket has been resolved; VuFind's automatic MySQL database upgrade process now properly accounts for table constraints.
• VUFIND-1232 - NoILS driver support for course reserves functionality is improved in release 4.0 (it now displays an offline warning instead of a fatal error).
• VUFIND-1233 - A reminder to simplify the creator role translation files (there is currently some redundancy that it should be possible to reduce).
• VUFIND-1234 - There was a bug in the asset pipeline which caused public cache files to be written to the wrong directory when VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR had a non-default value; this has been fixed in release 3.1.4.
• VUFIND-1235 - There was a bug in the browse function which caused inappropriate values to show up when browsing authors alphabetically (caused by switching from single-valued to multi-valued author fields); this has been fixed in release 3.1.4.
• VUFIND-1236 - This ticket tracks the translation reorganization task proposed by the abandoned pull request #754 (which has been closed due to inactivity).

• #803 - merged - This older PR has been merged; VuFind now uses the Whoops handler for better debugging of uncaught exceptions while in development mode. Demian had hoped to get an official 1.0 release of the zf2_whoops glue library minted before merging this, but due to months of inactivity on that project's end, he has settled for pinning a known-stable master commit in composer.json. If future changes are needed, it may be necessary to fork the project.
• #995 - merged - Removal of Google Maps code.
• #996, #997, #998 - merged - Geographic feature bug fixes and Solr schema improvements
• #999 - in progress - Improved off-canvas functionality (inspired by Amazon)
• #1000 - merged - new Piwik config option for an obscure edge case
• #1001 - merged - refactoring for improved Javascript style
• #1002 - merged - fix for VUFIND-1235
• #1003 - merged - File locking behavior for the asset pipeline to improve efficiency
• #1004 - merged - Minor session handling bug fix.
• #1005 - in progress - Improvements to the new sandal theme that were not completed in time for release 4.0.
• #1006 - merged - Translation improvements
• #1007 - merged - Fix for compatibility of KohaILSDI driver and latest Koha release.

3.1.4 went out a little early, and 4.0 went out on time. A few minor issues (so far, a KohaILSDI ILS driver compatibility issue and some missing translations in the new Channels code) have been discovered and will be addressed in a 4.0.1 release in the near future. Please continue to report any problems you encounter with the new release.

No news.

No news.

No news.

No news. Demian will continue to update minor versions as they are released; more dramatic upgrades may have to wait until 5.0 – we will discuss that at the next Summit.

No news.

The docValues pull request (#588) has fallen quite out of date. We should either take the time to update it or else close it. No objections in conversation to closing PR; will keep JIRA ticket open for further discussion.

All deprecations were completed in time for the 4.0 release. We can remove this item from future agendas until we determine a new list of features to remove.

No news.

There is ongoing work and discussion in some of the current active pull requests.

More active, Javascript-based functionality of themes have been delayed for 4.1 – 4.0's version of the sandal theme is less ambitious but previews the general style. Watch pull requests for more opportunities to provide feedback on this.

Demian has sent out an initial call for presentations, and a wiki page has been set up for the 2017 event. Registration will be $60 this year, but the fee is waived for presenters.

There will be no German joint session this year, as the German event is happening before the Villanova event; however, we hope to coordinate in some way with the other conference.

A VuFind Community mission statement has been added to the Community wiki page; this will be helpful in finding a well-fitting organizational home.

Tod is preparing to do some work to improve the efficiency of the alphabrowse handler.

There was some discussion of the difficulties of making alphabrowse interact cleanly with the hidden filter setting.

The next call will be Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 9am Eastern Daylight Time (13:00 GMT).