IRC developer meeting for October 2009 - Minutes

Date: 2009-10-16

Time: 10:00 - 12:32 EDT

Agenda: http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:meetings:2009-10

  1. Meeting called to order by Dan Scott (dbs) at 10:01 AM EDT
  2. Release status for 1.6
    1. Acquisitions issues brought up by George Duimovich on mailing list
      • Bill Erickson (berick) noted that the Acquisitions functionality in 1.6 is meant as a preview only; therefore, reported bugs are not considered showstoppers for the 1.6 release
        • Most Acquisitions features are backported to the rel_1_6 branch; anything critically broken will be backported to rel_1_6_0 branch.
      • Warren Layton (wlayton) noted that, of the four issues, one appeared to be already fixed, and only one would be a problem for staff using the interface
        • Bill Erickson noted that some of the issues are probably already fixed in the post-1.6 branch
      • ACTION: (Bill Erickson or Dan Scott) Put the reported bugs in Trac for now for later follow-up
    2. Repke's Authority Import Problems with Vandelay
      • Authority import with Vandelay is expected to work
        • Question of whether some assumptions about incoming records need to be documented to avoid confusion
      • No one had yet attempted to reproduce Repke's problem
      • Anoop Atre (moodaepo) said that Karen Schneider (kgs) said that Repke's authority record import was attempted on the DIG server, which may be handy info for debugging
      • ACTION: Dan Scott to add Repke's records to the test datasets
      • ACTION: Bill Erickson to test the upload on most recent rel_1_6_0_0 to confirm whether problem is fixed
      • ACTION: (?) Test on DIG server (try to reproduce); contact mrpeters-isl for help with server-side logs, etc. for debugging help
    3. Invalid date of birth
      • Galen Charlton (gmcharlt) reported a problem when an invalid birth date is entered (e.g., 2009-11-31).
        • Result is a pop-up alert window, which signals to the user that there is a problem.
        • If user ignores pop-up and continues to save patron with invalid birthday, stack trace is displayed with "DATABASE_UPDATE_FAILED" error
      • Not considered a showstopper
      • ACTION: (?) File as a bug for post-1.6.0.0
      • ACTION: (?) Delegate investigation + fix to Galen Charlton (gmcharlt) as he is alleged to have said: "if nobody picks it up in the next couple days, I might try my hand at a fix"
    4. Conify - Changing and Saving Hours of Operation and Addresses for Org Units
      • Warren Layton (wlayton) submitted a patch to fix the hours of operation, which Mike Rylander (miker_) applied
      • Trac Ticket #68 is still open against trunk for hours of operation but rel_1_6_0_0 works
        • Testing required to determine if aouhoo updating works in trunk
        • Currently unable to save addresses - patch required
        • Questions about "isnew" functions not working
      • ACTION: Warren Layton (wlayton) to put together a patch during the weekend of 2009-10-17 to 2009-10-18 to fix addresses in Conify
      • ACTION: Warren Layton (wlayton) to try to determine why "isnew" and other such functions no longer work and report back to Mike Rylander and other core developers
    5. OpenSRF 1.2.0.0 Needs to be Released
      • Dan Scott (dbs) noted that this agenda item was added before the realization that a tarball for the OpenSRF 1.2.0.0 release was already publicly available
      • Shawn Boyette (sboyette) noted that he has been working on OpenSRF testing in trunk:
    6. Releasing a second 1.6 release candidate (RC2)
      • Dan Scott (dbs) asked whether a second release candidate would be released for 1.6.0.0
        • Mike Rylander (miker_) noted that 1.6.0.0 is in production already (in Indiana)
        • Mike would prefer to cut a 1.6.0.0 release now and focus on 1.6.0.1 for any remaining bug fixes (after Conify ACTION item for Warren Layton complete [see 1.4, above])
      • Dan Scott (dbs) noted that a call for translations could be put out at the same time as a final 1.6.0.0 release
      • Dan Scott (dbs) asked Mike Rylander (miker_) if he was planning to the build the 1.6.0.0 tarball and if he needed any help (e.g., release process, release notes, upgrade notes)
      • Dan Scott noted that it would be a good idea to have someone else package a release (to spread knowledge), but not for this release
      • Side note: Mike Rylander noted that 1.4.0.7 will be released very shortly, which may be released before 1.6.0.0
      • 1.4.0.7 and 1.6.0.0 releases expect week of October 19-23.
      • Mike Rylander would like to see more autonomous release dates for OpenSRF and Evergreen (currently, OpenSRF releases are timed with Evergreen releases)
      • Jason Etheridge (phasefx_) wanted to backport two minor fixes to 1.6.0.0
      • Jeff Godin (jeff) asked what "Formal support for IE8" meant in the 1.6.0.0 release notes
        • Mike Rylander (miker_) responded that it referred to http/https cleanups for the My Account page in the OPAC
      • ACTION: Mike Rylander to share draft of 1.6.0.0 release notes with volunteers
      • ACTION: Dan Scott to help Mike Rylander with i18n stuff
      • ACTION: Jason Etheridge (phasefx_) to backport two fixes before release date (more relaxed "key" for oils_persist; bug fix for fleshing un-rendered list rows when scrolled into visibility)
  3. Patches Yet to be Applied
    • Dan Scott (dbs) noted that Warren Layton (wlayton) had submitted a patch to export bookbags to RefWorks, a bibliographic reference application
      • Dan volunteered to test and shepherd it into the first feature release after 1.6.0.0 (which would be 1.6.1.0)
    • Warren noted that there's already a patch of his for an RIS feed in the rel_1_6 branch
    • He suggested that the export-bookbags-to-RefWorks patch be added to the rel_1_6 branch as well so that both can be available for 1.6.1.0
    • ACTION: Dan Scott (dbs) to add Warren Layton's export-bookbags-to-RefWorks patch to the rel_1_6 branch
  4. Lowering Barriers to Participation
    • Dan Scott (dbs) is preparing material for an Evergreen development workshop at FSOSS 2009, which might be useful
      • Dan would like more eyes and contributors, if possible, to expand on his workshop for general use
    • Chris Sharp (chrissharp123) also noted that materials from the Evergreen 2009 Conference might also be helpful
      • Specifically, Chris mentioned berick's, miker_'s, and dbs's presentations could be transformed into documentation
      • Dan Scott also suggested getting some specific requests for developer-focused sessions/workshops at the Evergreen 2010 conference in place early
    • Nathanael Schilling (natschil) noted that there's a list on the wiki called "How can I contribute to Evergreen" but that it's quite broad and should likely be revised
    • Jeff Godin (jeff) offered to speak with others after the meeting to start creating some wiki page(s) to provide starting points and links to existing resources
    • Warren Layton (wlayton) and James Fournie (jamesrf) mentioned that there was a lack of feedback for patches sent to the mailing list
      • Bill Erickson noted that this is closely related to lowering the barrier to participation
      • Jeff Godin (jeff) noted that going through the mailing list archive looking for uncommitted patches isn't a good way to handle things; would rather they make into Trac or something
      • Dan Scott noted that it would be good if it was possible to generate a report of outstanding patches and keep discussion focused on a specific bug/feature
    • Jeff Davis (twirlip) asked about switching to a bug tracker that lets non-contributors to submit bugs
    • Jeff David (twirlip) also thought that a more detailed development roadmap would be helpful for participation
    • Jeff Godin (jeff) suggested that core devs could "brain dump" on IRC on a semi-regular basis to help spread knowledge and increase participation
    • ACTION: Jeff Godin (jeff) to post to create wiki page(s) for new developers (provide starting point, point to existing resources), and post to mailing lists with update during week of October 19-23
  5. Bug Tracking and QA
    • David Fiander (djfiander) suggested giving out bug-filing privileges once a person has previously reported a real bug via email or IRC ("greylisting")
    • Mike Rylander (miker_) suggested having 2 bug trackers: one "frontline" (e.g., launchpad) and one "on top of the code" (e.g., Trac)
      • The frontline one could be more open but track actual, code-related stuff only in the on-top-of-the-code one
        • Launchpad can integrate well with upstream projects, such as the Evergreen Trac instance
    • Anoope Atre (moodaepo) suggested a bug DB manager to properly assign bugs and do triage
    • Shawn Boyette (sboyette) noted that he is "the QA guy" at ESI and may be natural for him to volunteer to be the Bug Tracker Oversight Guy
      • Jeff Godin (jeff) suggested a call be put out for a "QA team" of bug wranglers and testers, working with Shawn
        • They would handle general bugs reports, migrate them "upstream" to the Trac instance (likely developing fixes for the bugs)
        • They could also be "Whipcrackers", shoving developers to get things done and keep discussion about bugs/patches going
    • Nathanael Schilling (natschil) noted he liked KDE's review board for bugs and patches, which can help avoid contentious patches
    • It was decided that launchpad would be tried for a period of three months as the "writable-by-anyone bug system / translation system / feature request / code review / FAQ-development"
    • ACTION: Shawn Boyette to post call for a QA team to -dev mailing list to help refine the details
  6. Release Process
    • Shawn Boyette (sboyette) working on a buildbot, whose output will be publicly available. First phase of development near completion (end of October).
      • Works with the GNU toolchain. Some other Evergreen-specific parts (e.g., building the tarball) exist "on the side"
    • ACTION: (?) Shawn Boyette to make buildbot source publicly available, either on SVN's ILS-Contrib, or git repository
  7. Acquisitions
    • Previously discussed for 1.6 agenda item. Skipped
  8. oils_i18n_gettext
    • Deferred to mailing list for more discussion
  9. Future Development
    • Craftsman has some outstanding bugs which Karen Schneider had documented
      • Need to convert those documented bugs into actual bugs in Trac
    • ACTION: Dan Scott (dbs) and Joe Atzberger (atz) to find Karen's documented Craftsman bugs and add to public bug tracking system
  10. Adjournment
    • Jeff Godin (jeff) proposed that the meeting be adjourned.
      • Encouraged people to post remaining "What's shaking in the near future? / Any long term projects that we need to start laying the groundwork for now?" to the openils-dev mailing list
    • Meeting adjourned at 12:32 PM EDT.