[Koha] What's on in koha-devel #12

Wed Apr 26 05:19:12 NZST 2017

Hello librarians and developers,

My last email got a lot of interest and people do not stop contacting me to
help us, it's fantastic!

Heh, no, just kidding.
But I am still willing to help you! Whenever you are ready, just let me/us
know!

The next release is on its way.
We are in the final stretch, I will summarize in this email what needs to
be done in the next month.

= Release dates =
Kyle published the different dates of the Koha 17.05 release:

May 5   - Feature Slush
May 12 - Feature Freeze, String Freeze, 1st Draft of Release Notes
May 19 - Release Beta, 2nd Draft of Release Notes
May 26 - Final Release
May 27 - Champagne!

What does it mean?
* Feature slush - enhancements that have not been marked as Passed QA at
this time will not be considered for the release
* Feature freeze - no new enhancements will be pushed to master, only bug
fixes!
* String freeze - only bug fixes without string changes will be pushed to
master

If you want one of our awesome features waiting for testing to be present in
this new release, you should warm the sandboxes up for the next 10 days!

= New stuffs pushed (or almost) =
== Hea v2 ==
The production server (https://hea.koha-community.org) has been updated
last week.
The Koha side code (bug 18066) has been pushed to master and should be
backported into the next stable releases (16.11.07, 16.05.13 and 3.22.21).

What's new?
* Ability to share the information at library level instead of installation
level.
If you have more than one library defined in your Koha installation, you
will be able to share the URL, country and geolocation of each library
* Configuration page in the administration module to define what you want
to share with the community (Home › Administration › Usage statistics -
admin/usage_statistics.pl)
* On the hea website your Koha installation will be linked to one public
page where you will see all the public information we collect
* The database of the website has been cleaned to remove the duplicate and
test entries

The screenshots I have done during the development:
Koha side:
New page to configure the info to share:
  https://pageshot.net/opGCLAZFt0s1HVzp/pro.kohadev.vm (with libraries info)
  https://pageshot.net/SKTFZgr40EKg6fge/pro.kohadev.vm (without libraries
info)

Hea side:
New layout for the homepage:
  https://pageshot.net/GGKbBZlZwxpXuCoi/localhost
View "see all libraries" (existing one):
  https://pageshot.net/2XplbZXFFr9rLNJS/localhost
View "see libraries by country":
  https://pageshot.net/G5czRcqh47WFIfRD/localhost
View "see libraries on a map":
  https://pageshot.net/Xa4qW3Vc4MclrEhO/localhost
View "public view for a library" (to show libraries what is public):
  https://pageshot.net/7whCONhkPuJUUxDP/localhost

I invite you all to take a look at the configuration page and share with us
the information you want to be public.
You can find the "Terms and Conditions" on github
https://github.com/joubu/hea-app/blob/v2/Terms_and_Conditions.md (Todo:
link it from the hea website and Koha!)

== Onboarding tools ==
The onboarding tool (bug 17855) is not pushed yet to master but is Passed
QA and should be part of the next release.
It adds new steps at the end of the installation process, to create
different kinds of data and ease the first contact.
You will be able to create a first library, patron category, item type,
circulation rule and a patron with superlibrarian permission.
Note that another patch (bug 17942) will arrive soon to refresh the style
of the web installer interface.

= Patches waiting for love =

== Automatically convert SQL reports (urgent) ==
Since we have bug 17196 (Move marcxml out of the biblioitems table) pushed
into the next release, we absolutely need bug 17898 (Add a way to
automatically convert SQL reports) too. It is waiting for testing and is
really easy to test and QA.
This patch will help librarians to update SQL reports after the move of the
marcxml field out of the biblioitems table.

== Permissions for lists (urgent) ==
The aim of bug 18228 is to make the permissions for list easier to use and
understand.
However as it will remove complexity, it may remove a feature you are
using. If you are using complex permission system to manage the lists you
should take a look at this bug from comment 19.
As Marcel already asked on the mailing list twice, this is the LAST CALL. I
am going to QA it before the feature slush if nobody disagrees.

== Facet configurable for Elastic ==
If you want to get a new Elastic search enhancement in the next release,
take a look at bug 18235. It adds a new configuration area to configure
facets.

= Technical discussions =
I would like to rework our background jobs. They do not work under Plack
and it is a pity (see bug 15032).
If anybody already did that in the past or has a clear idea on how to
implement a job queue using TheSchwartz, gearman or others, please let me
know.
Unfortunately I do not have much time at the moment to explore the
different options and play with them.

= Tools for devs =
I have added a new commit to the apply_on_cascade branch of my git-bz
github repo:
https://github.com/joubu/git-bz/commit/7afcfdb8a55384e79405ae44a697c36fa5f583a7
It modifies the behaviour of `git bz attach -e` when there are several
patches to attach.
The edit will be effective on the first attachment only. Indeed most of the
time I just want to change the status and obsolete the patches and not to
edit the commit messages.
Just revert it if you do not want this behaviour.

If you want to help testing bugs before the release, take a look at this
search: https://frama.link/Koha_Needs_Signoff_bugs
It shows all the opened bugs with a patch attached. They are bugs and new
enhancement, are sorted by severity.
Pick them from the top :)

The next general IRC meeting is on May 3rd, 20 UTC.
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_meeting_03_May_2017

The next dev IRC meeting is tomorrow, April 26th at 13UTC
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Development_IRC_meeting_26_April_2017

Hope to see your there!

Cheers,
Jonathan