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JourFixe-2012-08-20

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The Jour Fixe took place at Monday, August 20, from 09h00 to 13h30 at ILIAS open source e-Learning e.V. office in Köln. Participants were:

  • Michael Jansen, Alexander Killing, Matthias Kunkel (Minutes), Stefan Meyer, Florian Suittenpointner (from 11h30), Fabian Wolf

1 Appointments

2012-09-03: Jour Fixe, Cologne
2012-09-04: SIG ILIAS-EA, Stuttgart
2012-09-05: Development Conference, Stuttgart
2012-09-06 to 07: ILIAS Conference, Stuttgart
2012-09-17: Jour Fixe, Würselen

2 Bugfixing for maintained versions 4.1 and 4.2

Last releases:

  • ILIAS 4.2.5 published at 18 July 2012
  • ILIAS 4.1.9 published at 29 March 2012
Next releases:
  • 4.2.6 is scheduled for August 2012
  • 4.1.10 is not scheduled yet
We went through Mantis and had a overlook about all open issues. All issues were screened and assigned to the responsible developers.

  1. #9509 - LP wording: We assigned the report to Matthias. He will join Jörg and Florian and work out a solution.
  2. Payment bugs 9474, 9479, 9495, 9500: There are several reported bugs related to the ERP payment method in the ILIAS payment system. This extension has been introduced by Jesper Gødvad some years ago. Parts of these bugs are related to deprecated PHP code that needs to be updated. We have asked Jesper Gødvad if he still maintain this payment method. If not we would currently prefer to abandon it since Databay cannot take it over. Deadline for feedback is September 03.

3 Development Issues of 4.3

  1. Streamlining the settings of the Poll: We discussed the posting by HJ Lauener.
    • ad 1: We prefer the "german" way of explanation here, that should be translated into English
    • ad 2: We prefer the ordering as it is used in the course:
      • A first section with title description.
      • A second one with Online/Access
      • ... other settings.
      • Matthias will add a guideline wiki page for this.
      • We also think that the "Always Visible" option (Access settings) for side block components could be removed.
    • ad 3: We agree that we need a separate voting period. There should be a separate "Voting Period and Results" setting block after the availibility block. Start and end date of the voting period should be optional.
    • The period should not be a subsetting of any of the "Display Results" setting. It should be a separate option before the "Display Results" settings.
  2. Revision of Date Input Fields: We appreciate this improvement and schedule this as a usability fix for Release 4.3.
  3. 9463: Wording: Payment vs. Shop: If suitable we prefer to use the term "Shop" instead of "Payment".
  4. One image manager for all Tinys: We had a look at the new editor and highly appreciate its implementation. The new editor should be the default, a client.ini setting for falling back to the old one is ok. If no one complaints in the future we will abandon the old implementation. One final suggestion: "Constraint Proportions" should be activated by default.
  5. Secure Password Storage: Since we have not the resources to implement this for 4.3 we will postpone it to 4.4.
  6. Apply test defaults every time: If settings templates result in any conflicts and user warning need to be displayed, this should be done in the same way as if the settings have been changed manually.

4 Current status of ILIAS 4.3 and timetable

We have gone through the wiki page Release 4.3 that lists all features that have been scheduled for version 4.3. We updated the status of the funded and partly funded features.

Current implementation status of funded and partly funded features (compared to last Jour Fixe):

  • Still in conceptual discussion: 4 (was: 4)
  • Total number of features: 131

Due to the number of features that have not been started yet or are still in development we do not see the chance to get a beta release before mid of August. This changes our release map the following way:

  • Release 4.3.0_beta1 : scheduled for 24 August 2012
  • Release 4.3.0_stable : scheduled for end of September

5 Feature Requests for ILIAS 4.4

  1. Lernprozesse in Kursen planen auch für Kurstutoren verfügbar machen: We started to discuss this proposal today. However the responsible developer, Jörg Lützenkirchen, is on vacation. We will postone the decision to the next JF.
  2. Continuous Testing Mode: We postpone the decision to our JF in Würselen at 17 Sep 2012 when the test maintainers will be present.
  3. Show Revision Number of Installation: Our preference is to display this information in general on the "Server Data" screen in the administration screen. "Read" permission for node General Settings would be sufficient to see this informaiton. We schedule this for 4.4 but would also accept it as an usability fix during the beta phase of 4.3.
  4. Upload all Feedback-Files as one zip-archive: We appreciate the general idea and schedule it for Release 4.4. Since Umlaute and other special characters often lead to bugs in the file handling and/or in zip files we should consider a general revision of the file and zip handling. We also think that the user and objects IDs should be used in the directory structure and that the tutor should be able to download an empty target directory structure generated by ILIAS.
  5. REST Service: A general REST interface brings up some questions on the ILIAS architecture that we would like to adress in a workshop of the developers. We started to make developer meetings of the core developers in April 2012. We will schedule a next meeting after 4.3 is stable and propose to make the architecture the main topic. Stefan, we will contact you and invite you to the meeting.

6 Miscellaneous

  1. Information policy on usability and performance bug fixing:
    • Requirement: Apparently, fixed performance and usability bugs of a minor release aren't listed in the roadmap, or at least not all of them. That makes an update pretty unpredictable. Here's an example: In 4.1.9, a cache for the learning process in courses was introduced. Since this wasn't known, it could not be foreseen that after the update a massive problem arised with a related feature.The roadmap entry for 4.1.9 does not contain any respective entry. It would be very beneficial if the documentation of a minor release would really contain anything that is in the release. Especially, performance and usability bugs are important here, because they - unlike other bugs - sometimes significantly change the way the system works.
    • Decision: Due to limited resources we are not able to change our information policy in the requested way. Release pages list changes that affects the user interface levels and not the programmer's level. Bugfixing often includes a lot of changes on code level that cannot all be listed in the release report. If patches rely on ILIAS code the responsible developer either monitors the code files - or someone has to test dependent features after upgrade.
  2. Unit tests:
    • Suggestion: In order to run unit tests that do not need an installed and initialized ILIAS on bare checkouts, (e.g. prior to an installation for further testing) the existing tests that rely on the full stack running should be grouped according to the scheme proposed in the Unit Test Guideline Revision in section 1.2.4. Max Becker of Databay would volunteer to see through the existing tests and set the groups in phpdoc-blocks accordingly. Developers are kindly asked for their permission, as these modifications would result in commits into their respective code "neighbourhoods".
    • Decision: We highly appreciate this improvement. Max can add the according comments to the code under Leifos and Databay maintenance.

Next Jour Fixe at Monday, September 03, 09h00 at ILIAS open source office in Cologne.

Last edited: 28. May 2024, 10:03, Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]