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developers_call:minutes20121113

VuFind Developers Call Minutes: November 13, 2012

Attending: Filipe Bento, Oliver Goldschmidt, Demian Katz, David Maus, Sean Purcell, Al Rykhus

Agenda

1. New/Updated JIRA Tickets

  • VUFIND-122 - A crude Pazpar2 proof-of-concept patch for VuFind 2.0 has been posted here. This is still under development, and a more mature version may make it into master soon. In the meantime, newer code is available in this github branch.
  • VUFIND-327 - Demian has added availability status to favorite lists in the 2.0 code (a frequently requested feature at Villanova). It is currently on by default; perhaps a further enhancement would be to make this configurable, though it may also be just as well to leave disabling status as a theme-specific customization.
  • VUFIND-348 - This ticket has been resolved; homepage facets may now be configured independently of advanced search facets.
  • VUFIND-534 - This ticket (about adding support for social web services) was too broad and vague, so it has been closed in favor of opening a larger number of more targeted tickets.
  • VUFIND-542 - This ticket has some new discussion of improved author indexing.
  • VUFIND-559 - This ticket (upgrade to Solr 3.6) has been adjusted to reflect the release of Solr 4.0 – we may want to upgrade directly to 4 without the intermediate stage. If anyone has time to investigate the potential challenges of a 4.0 upgrade, that would be very helpful.
  • VUFIND-571 - Some code has been shared here to implement the “redirect failed advanced searches to the advanced search screen” feature. Demian doesn't plan to commit this as-is, but the feature may be worth reimplementing in a simpler form in 2.0.
  • VUFIND-582 - Loading course reserves data from CSV has been committed to trunk/master for 1.x and 2.x.
  • VUFIND-588 - This ticket is closed now that Greenstone Digital Library import configurations are included in trunk/master and documented in the wiki.
  • VUFIND-603 - Some improvements to the Browse module (custom alphabets and optional alphabetical sorting) have been committed.
  • VUFIND-605 - Tabs are now controlled by their own set of classes, not through record drivers, in the 2.0 master branch.
  • VUFIND-625 - This Shibboleth-related ticket has been closed because the issue should be addressed by the 2.0 code; Demian does not plan to fix it in 1.x (due to lack of time to clean up and test).
  • VUFIND-628 - The fix for incorrect facet order display when using the same facet in multiple recommendation modules has been committed (1.x and 2.x).
  • VUFIND-635 - An improved version of the Clickatell SMS patch has been posted here. It has been further improved, committed and ported forward to 2.0.
  • VUFIND-661 - This ticket (about confusing side effects of sharding) has been closed since documentation is now updated. There is some discussion here about naming sharding strategies – please comment if interested.
  • VUFIND-679 - This small recommendation module bug fix has been committed.
  • VUFIND-682 - Discussion of the VuFind HTTP Proxy service has continued on this ticket; please review and comment if interested.
  • VUFIND-683 - This ticket reports a problem with sending SMS messages with no subject line; Demian is still attempting to find a way to reproduce the error.
  • VUFIND-684 - This ticket provides a patch to make brief record display configurable; Demian does not plan to commit, as this may be better handled through theme modifications – feel free to vote/comment if you feel differently.
  • VUFIND-685 - This ticket covers the recent expansion of the OCLC numbering system; it has been closed with a patch to fix potential indexing problems.
  • VUFIND-686 - This ticket suggests a method for creating an index field for SuDoc numbers.
  • VUFIND-687 / VUFIND-688 / VUFIND-689 / VUFIND-690 / VUFIND-691 - These tickets are sub-tasks of VUFIND-135 (configurable social features); they have been opened in case we are able to implement a subset of the functionality prior to completing all possible options.
  • VUFIND-692 - This ticket is the new home for Ronan's Disqus patch, previously found on the more vague, open-ended VUFIND-534 ticket.
  • VUFIND-693 - This ticket is a reminder to upgrade to the next official SolrMarc release, which will allow us to close a number of other indexing-related tickets (see links on the ticket for details).
  • VUFIND-694 - This ticket offers a patch for rendering internal links (like help screens) in a lightbox instead of popping up a new browser window.
  • VUFIND-695 - This ticket (now resolved) tracks a new VuFind 2.0 feature: staying on the same page after logging out.
  • VUFIND-696 - This ticket mentions a problem in VuFind's Google Search API integration; since the API is no longer supported by Google, this has been closed as “Won't Fix” and the 2.0 upgrade script has been updated to notify users who configured the feature that it is no longer available.
  • VUFIND-697 - This ticket (now resolved) points to a bug in the 2.0beta install script. The issue will be fixed in 2.0RC1.
  • VUFIND-698 - This ticket proposes some expanded LDAP configuration options. Please comment if interested.
  • VUFIND-699 - This ticket (now resolved) points to a bug in 2.0beta configuration loading. This issue will be fixed in 2.0RC1.
  • VUFIND-700 - This ticket points out that the VuFind 1.x install script assumes that MySQL is on the local server; this issue is resolved in 2.0, but there are no plans to update 1.x.
  • VUFIND-701 - This ticket points out a bug in alphabetical browsing of Dewey call numbers and proposes a solution; Demian does not currently have time to implement, but if anyone needs it, the work should be fairly straightforward and Demian is happy to provide support.
  • VUFIND-702 - This ticket proposes some platform-aware smarts for the VuFind 2 install script.
  • VUFIND-703 - This ticket refers to the “too many boolean clauses” problem in the Favorites module; this has been worked around (with a warning message) as of 1.3 and completely fixed as of 2.0.
  • VUFIND-704 - This ticket requests a review process for user-submitted comments; the need may already be addressed by VuFind Manager.
  • VUFIND-705 - This ticket suggests updating Europeana integration to use their new 2.0 API.
  • VUFIND-706 - This ticket proposes a way of making RSS XSL transformations more extensible in 1.x; it has been closed as “won't fix” because 2.0 handles RSS without using XSL at all.
  • VUFIND-707 - Support for the Clavius ILS has been added in 2.0.

Progress has also been made on unit tests and David Maus' search system refactoring; since many granular tickets are involved in these changes, they are not listed individually here.

2. VuFind 2.0 Update

VuFind 2.0 has been updated to use Zend Framework 2.0.3.

All services registered in the top-level service manager (except “SearchManager,” which is probably subject to near-future refactoring) have been prefixed with “VuFind\” to avoid naming conflicts with other modules.

The test suite has been slightly reorganized and expanded. Unit tests are for environment-neutral testing, while integration tests rely on the test instance set up by Phing, and some may be useful when run in multiple environmental contexts (i.e. database tests can be run against MySQL and PostgreSQL to test cross-compatibility).

Continuous integration has been failing due to PhpDocumentor2 errors. Demian suspects that these are related to bugs in the outdated version of PhpDoc2 that Phing requires. Some documentation is temporarily disabled to avoid errors. Once a new version of Phing comes out, Demian will upgrade everything and try again.

Demian has completed the first round of refactoring to decouple tab rendering from record driver objects.

Demian is currently working on merging the 1.x collection branch and porting it to 2.0 – so far, initial display of hierarchy trees has been completed (but more work is needed to add Javascript-based enhancements).

Chris has been working on Pazpar2 integration and the new VuDL interface.

We discussed whether/how to split VuFind into reusable ZF2 modules. For configuration, it was suggested to have a default module configuration that could be overridden at the local settings directory level to include/exclude extra modules.

David recommended using Git submodules to manage the pieces of VuFind. Demian will do some reading into the topic to gain a better understanding. Sourceforge apparently supports multiple repos, so it may be possible to test this approach by setting up a repo for David's HttpProxy module and then including this into VuFind as a submodule.

3. VuFind Developers Summit 2012 Wrap-Up

The Summit was a success. Video will be posted soon; Demian will announce on the lists when it is fully available. Some streams are already viewable on the VuFind Summit 2012 wiki page (which also has many of the presentation slides). Also forthcoming is an updated roadmap document for discussion (probably available early next year).

4. Linked Data

Linked data was discussed several times during the VuFind Summit and related conferences. Ideally, there are several ways that VuFind should work with Linked Data:

  • There should be a standard process/toolkit for pulling in linked data, flattening it to records, and pushing it to Solr.
  • VuFind should be able to export linked data in order to share bib records and user-provided metadata like tags and comments.

Achieving both of these goals requires a better understanding of existing ontologies. Solutions may become more clear as the Library of Congress continues its work on a successor to MARC. It is probably wise to start thinking about this now rather than racing to catch up later.

One starting point might be to open communications with the LODLAM community.

On the subject of sharing tags/comments, David pointed out the Open Annotation Collaboration and Filipe pointed out the Upper Tag Ontology. This workshop may also be relevant.

Filipe has put some relevant references into the wiki.

5. Other Topics?

No other topics this week.

Next Call

The next call will be Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 10am Eastern Standard Time (15:00 GMT).

developers_call/minutes20121113.txt · Last modified: 2015/12/21 17:23 by demiankatz