[Koha] What's on in koha-devel #8

[Jonathan Druart]

Hello librarians and developers,

Koha 16.11 and its Debian packages have now been released [1].

As Mirko noted Debian Wheezy is no longer supported and Debian packages
won't be provided for 3.22 [2].

I should also added that some important bugs have been reported recently
and it may be better to wait for the 16.11.1 version to be released before
upgrading [3, 4, 5].
Note that if you database password contain Unicode characters, you should
also wait for bug 17720 (CSRF token is not generated correctly).

= Refactoring =
== Move to the Koha namespace ==
We keep on moving the C4::Members module code to the Koha namespace and a
few subroutine of C4::Circulation are going to be moved as well [6].

== Remove the biblioitems.marcxml field ==
I have been asking for help on bug 17196 (Move marcxml out of the
biblioitems table) for months now and this will certainly be my last
attempt to get attention on it. As we are at the beginning of the release
we should focus on it to get it pushed soon. That way we will have time to
catch and fix bugs if we find some.

== Rewrite of the upload feature =
A month ago Marcel started to refactor the upload section [7].
This is the groundwork to start improvements in this area. Once this is
pushed we will be able to add new features, so please test!

= Template Toolkit syntax for notices =
Kyle started a discussion some months ago [8] to switch from our home-made
syntax for notices to the Template Toolkit syntax.
That would bring us a lot of flexibility to write the notices.
But to do so, we need a plan! We already started to support this syntax
(inside 16.11) but then we have to decide what to do next.
Currently the plan would be to replace the default syntax (bug 15278), then
reveal in the editor that you can use this new syntax (bug 15277) and
finally add documentation to help people writing/porting their own notices
(bug 15276).
We need to  get opinions to know how we could move forward. Kyle is going
to start a new topic on the Koha mailing list for that. Stay tuned!

= Standardize our EXPORT =
A bit more technically, I would need developer's attention on bug 17600
(Standardize the EXPORT). At the end of the last release, very bad bugs
appeared at the last minute because of our circular dependencies and the
way we export subroutines from routines. Everything is (quickly) explained
on that bug and a patchset has been submitted for discussion. If you are
aware of how we could fix that cleanly, please jump into the discussion.

The next general IRC meeting is on December 7th, 14 UTC.
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_meeting_7_December_2016

The next dev IRC meeting is on December 14th, 13 UTC.
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Development_IRC_meeting_14_December_2016

Hope to see your there!

Cheers,
Jonathan

[1] https://koha-community.org/koha-16-11-released-2
[2]
http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/2016-November/043330.html
[3] Bug 17676 - Default COLLATE for marc_subfield_structure is not set
[4] Bug 17344 - Can't set guarantor in quick add brief form
[5] Bug 17709 - Article request broken
[6] Bug 17677 - Move C4::Circulation code to the Koha namespace
[7] Bug 17501 - Koha Objects for uploaded files
[8]
http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/2016-February/042316.html