In October, VuFind® development focused on completing outstanding work for the 9.0 release, and significant progress was made, including the completion of a significant new feature (optional star ratings), the removal of a number of obsolete/deprecated features, the expansion of the test suite, and the updating of some dependencies (most notably Solr). Additionally, a number of bugs were fixed, and some new security features were introduced (most significantly, the ability to disable user-initiated ILS login in situations where it is not needed – pull request #2570).

The Project Management Committee continued to work on improving documentation (most notably by developing a new Production Checklist wiki page), on-boarding new Registered Service Providers, managing the Community Call survey (for which results will be forthcoming) and investigating an improved platform for managing the project's internationalization.

The following items were completed in the past month:

• Add config setting for display of items without barcodes: #2548 / #2553
• Add Finnish translations for external authentication: #2566
• Add missing elements (and deprecation warning support) to MakeTag: #2560
• Add more options to preferred library selection: #2546
• Add setting to restrict ILS login by user: #2570
• Add support for merging sections of yaml config files: #2556
• Add support for star ratings: VUFIND-1550 / #2417
• Add tests for RecordTab classes: #2565
• Add username policy alongside the existing password policy: #2581
• Adding configurable ignoreFilterReasons in Alma Resolver: #2498
• Always pass a string to Bcrypt verify method: #2591
• Build OpenURL without http_build_query to avoid PHP array syntax in URL: #2313
• Check that there are pick up locations to choose from: #2575
• Cookie consent fixes/improvements: #2558, #2563, #2583, #2592, #2593
• CSP Headers Update (fix for SVG compatibility): #2555
• DbUpgrade fixes: #2562, #2564
• Deduplicate URLs in record drivers: VUFIND-1277 / #2561
• End session if the user of the session cannot be found: #2594
• Fix decoding of MARC ISO2709 record with multibyte subfield codes/indicator values: #2574, #2576
• Fix translation of Back link in account creation: #2582
• Icon helper improvements: #1962
• LESS Compiler Deprecation: #2586
• Make AbstractApi::makeRequest more generic/safe/flexible: VUFIND-1579 / #2554
• Make sure to not call sanitizeDate or preg_match with null: #2559
• OAuth2Controller: Add an overridable wrapper around config Locator: #2567
• Optimize use of iterators in custom SolrMarc methods: #2520
• Pass full configuration to Holdings view helper: #2571
• Refactor configuration file path resolution: #2568
• Remove deprecated \VuFind\Ils\Driver\CacheTrait: #2588
• Removed obsolete translation mappings: #2590
• Remove RecordLink View Helper: #2589
• Remove support for Apache 2.2: VUFIND-1497 / #2577
• Remove unused language string: #2599
• Removed the author_fuller / author2_fuller Solr index fields: #2579
• Smarter initialization in PunctuationContainer.java: #2597
• Upgrade to Solr 8.11.2: #2578
• Validate MultiILS login target: #2573
• VuFindHarvest: Fix last_harvest.txt datestamp incorrectly updated when OAI-PMH response is not chronological: vufindharvest#7, vufindharvest#8, vufindharvest#10
• VuFindHarvest: Improved XML sanitization: vufindharvest#11

Additionally, #2572 was opened by accident and subsequently closed. #2144 (Add proxy settings for Phing) was closed due to inactivity (and because there may be an alternate solution that does not require code changes).

The following items were reported / begun in the past month, but are not yet completed:

• Add new VuFind ObserverManager to replace hunt: #2569
• Authority module: improve record routing: VUFIND-1552 / #2595
• Browse handler: Use Marc4j normalizers; streamline/update build process: VUFIND-1525 / vufind-browse-handler#39
• Clean up language keys for file import on lokalise.com: VUFIND-1586 / #2598
• Handle relator URIs during indexing: VUFIND-1556 / #2596
• Remove configuration settings deprecated in Solr 8: VUFIND-1571 / #2587
• Upgrade to Solr 9: #2580 / vufind-browse-handler#40

• Add ChannelProvider for Solr-based new items: VUFIND-1582
• Any action using ILS credentials fails to display the account menu if credentials missing: VUFIND-1583
• Create Mink tests for library card functionality: VUFIND-1585
• Implement getTrendingBibs for FOLIO driver: VUFIND-1581
• Remove deprecations from 9.x: VUFIND-1584
• Virtua driver: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist (hlrcdetl): #2557

The following items saw significant progress / activity during the past month:

• Adds explanatory text to filters (facets) for more accessibility: #2493
• Ajax Status Standardize and Modernize: #2447
• Composer package javascript resolving: #2287
• Create generic mechanism for loading content with caching support: VUFIND-1554 / #2422
• Improved interface for active filter removal: #2522
• Remove password check in PAIA patronLogin() if client_credentials is used as grant_type: #2513
• ThemeInfo: Fix getMergedConfig: #2543