User Tools

Site Tools


communications:newsletter:nov-dec_2012

Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

Link to this comparison view

Next revision
Previous revision
communications:newsletter:nov-dec_2012 [2012/12/03 16:13] – created terlagacommunications:newsletter:nov-dec_2012 [2022/02/10 13:34] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
Line 15: Line 15:
 Program - everyone who submitted a proposal has been contacted (if you haven't heard anything let me know – information.detective@gmail.com) and the draft program will be up on the website this week. It looks like a really strong program--thank you to everyone who submitted a session. Clever titles include: Ol' Time Acquisitions Rodeo and Variety Show, The Accidental DBA, and Contributing Code to Evergreen is Easier Than You Think. Thank you to the program advisory committee for helping Shirley Lew and myself out:  Program - everyone who submitted a proposal has been contacted (if you haven't heard anything let me know – information.detective@gmail.com) and the draft program will be up on the website this week. It looks like a really strong program--thank you to everyone who submitted a session. Clever titles include: Ol' Time Acquisitions Rodeo and Variety Show, The Accidental DBA, and Contributing Code to Evergreen is Easier Than You Think. Thank you to the program advisory committee for helping Shirley Lew and myself out: 
  
- Anoop Atre, Equinox Software +  *  Anoop Atre, Equinox Software 
- Shauna Borger, Indiana State Library +   Shauna Borger, Indiana State Library 
- Matt Carlson, King County Library Systems +   Matt Carlson, King County Library Systems 
- Dan Scott, Laurentian University +   Dan Scott, Laurentian University 
- Chris Sharp, Georgia Library PINES+   Chris Sharp, Georgia Library PINES
  
 Register for the conference: http://eg2013.eventbrite.com  Register for the conference: http://eg2013.eventbrite.com 
Line 31: Line 31:
  
 Tis the season to give thanks for all that we have been fortunate to receive over the past year! Well, actually, as a Canadian that time was well over a month ago, and even the Americans in the crowd celebrated Thanksgiving last week. Given my tardiness, I hope it’s not too late to celebrate the accomplishments of four students over the summer. Back in March, we were all excited to hear that Evergreen had been accepted into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program for the second year in a row. This year, we were offered four student internships, up from two slots in 2011–an encouraging sign about the maturity of our project.  Tis the season to give thanks for all that we have been fortunate to receive over the past year! Well, actually, as a Canadian that time was well over a month ago, and even the Americans in the crowd celebrated Thanksgiving last week. Given my tardiness, I hope it’s not too late to celebrate the accomplishments of four students over the summer. Back in March, we were all excited to hear that Evergreen had been accepted into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program for the second year in a row. This year, we were offered four student internships, up from two slots in 2011–an encouraging sign about the maturity of our project. 
-• Joseph Lewis returned for his second year in the program. In 2011, he built a greatly enhanced Library Settings user interface that included search filters and setting histories. This year, he worked on one of the crucial tasks of upgrading our core infrastructure from the aging Dojo 1.3 to a more modern version of Dojo, and along with his code contributions he left us with valuable advice on how to proceed with finalizing the work. Joseph’s mentor was Thomas Berezansky from the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium.  +  * • Joseph Lewis returned for his second year in the program. In 2011, he built a greatly enhanced Library Settings user interface that included search filters and setting histories. This year, he worked on one of the crucial tasks of upgrading our core infrastructure from the aging Dojo 1.3 to a more modern version of Dojo, and along with his code contributions he left us with valuable advice on how to proceed with finalizing the work. Joseph’s mentor was Thomas Berezansky from the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium.  
-• Swenyu Duan tackled the challenge of optimizing Evergreen’s search performance by porting some of Evergreen’s core database routines from PL/Perl to C. Swenyu’s work leveraged the ICU Unicode library for normalization and built on libxml and libxslt2 to provide C-language versions of some routines used in merging and overlaying bibliographic records. Ultimately, he found that the gains to be had from porting to C were minimal–one of the hard lessons that we often run into as developers is that theory does not work out in practice–but learned a lot about measuring performance and creating extensions for PostgreSQL and shared his lessons on his blog. Swenyu’s mentor was Mike Rylander from Equinox Software.  +  • Swenyu Duan tackled the challenge of optimizing Evergreen’s search performance by porting some of Evergreen’s core database routines from PL/Perl to C. Swenyu’s work leveraged the ICU Unicode library for normalization and built on libxml and libxslt2 to provide C-language versions of some routines used in merging and overlaying bibliographic records. Ultimately, he found that the gains to be had from porting to C were minimal–one of the hard lessons that we often run into as developers is that theory does not work out in practice–but learned a lot about measuring performance and creating extensions for PostgreSQL and shared his lessons on his blog. Swenyu’s mentor was Mike Rylander from Equinox Software.  
-• Pranjal Prabhash joined us for the summer to work on building a standard OpenSRF library for PHP, so that developers will have the ability to easily integrate Evergreen with common Web frameworks like Drupal and discovery layers like VuFind. Building on some of previous efforts in this area, Pranjal was able to build a functioning OpenSRF PHP library and turned his efforts towards the end of his time towards preparing the code to be accepted by the PEAR project. Pranjal blogged about his progress and was mentored by Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley from Equinox Software.  +  • Pranjal Prabhash joined us for the summer to work on building a standard OpenSRF library for PHP, so that developers will have the ability to easily integrate Evergreen with common Web frameworks like Drupal and discovery layers like VuFind. Building on some of previous efforts in this area, Pranjal was able to build a functioning OpenSRF PHP library and turned his efforts towards the end of his time towards preparing the code to be accepted by the PEAR project. Pranjal blogged about his progress and was mentored by Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley from Equinox Software.  
-• Daniel Rizea stepped up to work on another common wishlist item, an Android client for Evergreen. His efforts included both a patron-oriented application and an application containing a subset of the staff client. Daniel’s work exercised and refined Evergreen’s support for Java and resulted in functional code (ed. I know of at least one university that has built an experimental app based on Daniel’s code). Daniel wrote about his efforts on his blog and was mentored by Dan Wells from the Hekman Library, Calvin College.  +  • Daniel Rizea stepped up to work on another common wishlist item, an Android client for Evergreen. His efforts included both a patron-oriented application and an application containing a subset of the staff client. Daniel’s work exercised and refined Evergreen’s support for Java and resulted in functional code (ed. I know of at least one university that has built an experimental app based on Daniel’s code). Daniel wrote about his efforts on his blog and was mentored by Dan Wells from the Hekman Library, Calvin College.  
-In summary, we were fortunate to have been able to work with four students over the course of the summer. I like to think that we helped them gain important experience in working in a large distributed software project, and hope that (when exams are over and course projects are out of the way!) that we’ll continue to see them in the IRC channel and on the mailing lists. +  In summary, we were fortunate to have been able to work with four students over the course of the summer. I like to think that we helped them gain important experience in working in a large distributed software project, and hope that (when exams are over and course projects are out of the way!) that we’ll continue to see them in the IRC channel and on the mailing lists. 
  
 I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Google Open Source Programs Office for supporting the Evergreen project by accepting our application to GSoC this year and so generously providing stipends for four students. Google also covered the costs for both Thomas Berezansky and I to attend the GSoC Mentors’ Summit in October, where we met up with hundreds of other developers from open source projects to make connections and exchange experiences and insights during a two-day unconference at the Mountain View Google campus.  I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Google Open Source Programs Office for supporting the Evergreen project by accepting our application to GSoC this year and so generously providing stipends for four students. Google also covered the costs for both Thomas Berezansky and I to attend the GSoC Mentors’ Summit in October, where we met up with hundreds of other developers from open source projects to make connections and exchange experiences and insights during a two-day unconference at the Mountain View Google campus. 
Line 45: Line 45:
  
 Last month’s Evergreen Developers meeting had a packed agenda. The following topics were covered during the meeting: Last month’s Evergreen Developers meeting had a packed agenda. The following topics were covered during the meeting:
-• Developers discussed ways to improve testing for fixes to security-related bugs. This testing poses difficulties since there is only a small pool of developers who can test the branch before it is released.  +  * • Developers discussed ways to improve testing for fixes to security-related bugs. This testing poses difficulties since there is only a small pool of developers who can test the branch before it is released.  
-• David Busby volunteered to set up a server that can be used to test the code from Google Summer of Code Intern Joseph Lewis to upgrade Evergreen’s version of Dojo. Once the server is set up, Kathy Lussier will coordinate testing of the various dojo interfaces. +  • David Busby volunteered to set up a server that can be used to test the code from Google Summer of Code Intern Joseph Lewis to upgrade Evergreen’s version of Dojo. Once the server is set up, Kathy Lussier will coordinate testing of the various dojo interfaces. 
-• The developers agreed that the older javascript catalog (jspac) should disappear in Evergreen 2.4. However, the new Template Toolkit catalog (tpac) is still missing several features that were available in jspac. Several community members volunteered to update http://www.evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:opac:template-toolkit:plan to more clearly identify the missing jspac features and to create related bug reports in Launchpad. Features that should be reinstated in tpac before jspac is removed will be identified with a jspacremovalblocker tag in Launchpad. People with concerns about specific features missing from tpac should contribute and note specific blockers to ripping out jspac. +  • The developers agreed that the older javascript catalog (jspac) should disappear in Evergreen 2.4. However, the new Template Toolkit catalog (tpac) is still missing several features that were available in jspac. Several community members volunteered to update http://www.evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:opac:template-toolkit:plan to more clearly identify the missing jspac features and to create related bug reports in Launchpad. Features that should be reinstated in tpac before jspac is removed will be identified with a jspacremovalblocker tag in Launchpad. People with concerns about specific features missing from tpac should contribute and note specific blockers to ripping out jspac. 
-• There is a large backlog of bugs in Launchpad. Those who can test submitted code should do so.+  • There is a large backlog of bugs in Launchpad. Those who can test submitted code should do so.
  
 ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
communications/newsletter/nov-dec_2012.1354569233.txt.gz · Last modified: 2022/02/10 13:34 (external edit)

Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license: CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Donate Powered by PHP Valid HTML5 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki

© 2008-2022 GPLS and others. Evergreen is open source software, freely licensed under GNU GPLv2 or later.
The Evergreen Project is a U.S. 501(c)3 non-profit organization.