JourFixe-2016-06-06

Date and place: Monday, June 06, 2016 from 12:30 – 18h45 at ILIAS-Verein office in Köln

Participants: Amstutz, Timon [amstutz] (per BBB/Skype) • Killing, Alexander [alex] • Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt] • Colin Kiegel (per Skype) • Neumann, Fred [fneumann] • Wolf, Fabian [fwolf] • Klees, Richard [rklees] • Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel] • Heyser, Björn [bheyser] • Schmid, Fabian [fschmid] (per BBB/Skype) • Vollbach, Guido [gvollbach]

1 Appointments

• June 20, 2016: Jour Fixe
• July 04, 2016: Jour Fixe
• August 26, 2016: Deadline test cases for 5.2 and feature approval
• August 31, 2016: 5.2.0 beta1
• September 07, 2016: DevConf Utrecht

2 Maintained Versions

2.1 Roadmap

Last releases:

• ILIAS 5.1.6 published at May 19, 2016
• ILIAS 5.0.12 published at May 06, 2016
• ILIAS 4.4.15 published at May 27, 2015 (maintenance ended with this release)

• ILIAS 5.1.7 is scheduled for July 2016
• ILIAS 5.0.13 is scheduled for end of June 2016
• No additional 4.4 release planned

2.2 Mantis Bug Reports

All open issues reported or modified since the last Jour Fixe were screened by the product manager before the Jour Fixe and assigned to the responsible developers if necessary. The following issues were discussed in detail:

• #18295: Modal needed after answered last question : We all agree to introduce a modal to give more information about the current status of the user within the test. The modal will be introduced as a bugfix for 5.1.7 and should have three options:
  • Finish test
  • Answer yet unanswered questions (please display number)
  • Review answers given (go to first question answered)
• #18423 - exporting comments : We agree with the maintainer's opinion that exporting comments with the blog export is a feature request. Please open a wiki page for this request and make a suggestion how to handle privacy issues. Do we need to notify users that made a comment when exporting the blog? Do we need to have an export with and without comments?
• #18327 - access to exercise : We prefer solution (c). Behaviour should be similar to courses and groups. Such a visualisation should be available in all objects where members / users are added (e.g. repository blog, session, ...) but this is considered as a feature request (streamlining). Please feel free to create a related wiki page if you like.
• #18478: 'Delete inactive user accounts' ignores accounts having 'last_login is null' : We agree with Guido's suggestion. The query should include "NULL" (and considere a creation date) as well to get also users that never have logged in.
• #18338: Import button is always shown : We agree with the maintainer's suggestion and would like to have a checkbox to allow the import (similar to the export). Please add a short notice in the release report.
• #18500: Course export files remain in the system after course object has been purged from trash : We agree with Stefan's suggestion and deny a centralized solution. Deletion process should be controlled by the object itself.

2.3 Open Pull Requests

• #161: Dependency Injection for trunk : PR is currently assigned to Stefan who will merge the PR pretty soon (to avoid further merges by Richard to allow merging).
• Mail system changes according to SPF (Sender Policy Framework): FROM should be always set to the address configured in the ILIAS mail administration/Reply-To should be set to the user's email address when an email was created manually by a user. A pull request is available: https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/pull/206 : We highly appreciate this PR. Please add  a short notice to the release report.

2.4 Continuous Integration

Overview on current status and reports from CI-server at http://ci.ilias.de:

• Result of last test at 2016-06-05:
  • Tests failed: 130 (130 at last JF)
  • Tests passed: 457 (457 at last JF)
• New Server at Manitu is set up by Tobias.
• Dicto architectural tests: not working currently

3 Kitchen Sink

DIscussion and decision upon the following UI Kitchen Sink issues:

1. Centralizing UI-Components : Timon gave a short overview on the current status of the Kitchen Sink integration within ILIAS (UI component library). We highly appreciate the current version. Please consider the path handling for images (due to skins). We should avoid to pass plain text. Object instances of plain text (no bold or italic) should be passed instead.

4 Developing ILIAS 5.2

4.1 PHP 7

Current state of getting ILIAS PHP7 compliant:

• Funding: crowdfunding completed - see http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto_docu_dcl_3700_747.html
• PHP7 Branch: has been merged into trunk
• Current status:
  • The current state for each directory in ILIAS is tracked here: http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto_docu_dcl_5192.html
  • Current status
    • Open: 33
    • Work in Progress: 4
    • Internal Testing: 8
    • Ready for Testcases: 131
• Next steps: problems should be posted to Dev list.

4.2 Development Issues 5.2

Notice for developers: please add all suggestions for changed defaults to page Default Database Template Settings for 5.2 !

Development issues to be discussed / to be decided upon:

• Compatibility to PHP7: Abandon auto-indentation in code elements due to move to other lib (GeShi) : We decided to use GeShi instead of the old syntax highlighting _and_ to abandon auto-indentation with 5.2. If anyone objects, please notify Killing, Alexander [alex] until June 20.
• jQuery (3.0): deprecated warnings [jluetzen] : We ask all developers to check jQuery warnings and to fix them accordingly.
• Automated Tests and Sessions don't cooperate [rklees]
  • Output of phpunit Services/Init/test
  • Suspicious Code
• Object statistics: permission handling [jluetzen]: We decided to remove the permission check for the statistics to show all exsting objects and not only the ones for whom the user has READ permission.

4.3 Testing 5.2

• A test52 installation using PHP 5.5 has been set up and is available at: www.ilias.de/test52. We will change to PHP7 with 5.2.0_beta1 at the latest.
• Test rail is open for creating new test cases and improving existing ones for version 5.2.

4.4 Feature Requests To Decide Upon

The following features were already scheduled for a former version and suggested again for 5.2. To speed up the scheduling process and to save time for yet undiscussed requests, these features were scheduled ‘on the fast lane’ by the responsible maintainer and the product manager:

• Group Link : Highly appreciated. Alexandra will take care of a better naming for the reference objects (as they are no references).

The following features have been set on the agenda to be discussed and to force their scheduling for version 5.2:

1. Hide News Older than X Days: We highly appreciate this request and schedule it for 5.2.
2. Improved Separating Submission and Navigation / Is-dirty Mode for Tests: Fred gave a live demonstration of his suggestion to improve separating submission and navigation. We appreciate his suggestions but have some additional wishes / requests:
   • The "Next" button is considered as the primary action of the question screen and shall become primary buttons. Additionally, we introduce glyphs in Next and Previous.
   • The question title should be presented in a proper line and gets a new byline for status information: "editing", "not answered yet", "3 points", ...
   • The actions for "Undo Editing" and "Delete Answer Completely" shall …
     • … either be moved as buttons under the question to make these actions less important.
     • … or be moved into an Actions menu (on the same level like the status information) for the same reasons.
   • "Reset Ordering" will be removed and task is carried aut by "Delete answer completely".
   • As a vision for 5.3 (or higher) we want for all question types that users activily interact while answering the question.
     • For 5.2 we need a checkbox "Use unchanged answer" for ordering questions unless as we do not refactor this question type to avoid that a correct question is already given.
     • To get a common understanding for handling MC questions without correct answer, we ask the members SIG EA if their teachers are using MC questions where no answer is correct or if this question design is not used (and this setting does not need to be supported any longer). In this case, we can deactivate tests with MC questions which have no correct solution and notify the responsible user that these questions have to be edited. A survey will be prepared by Matthias.
   We schedule this feature for 5.2 and hope to solve the current usability problems in the test.
   
3. Plugin Slot for PDF generation : We highly appreciate this request and schedule it for 5.2. Maintenance for this plugin slot will be offered by Databay / Guido Vollbach.
4. Server-Side MathJax Rendering : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 5.2. "Cache graphics" does not need a setting but should be done always. The combination of rendering options requires an early initialisation of the rendering purpose in a request for PDF generation or HTML export. This has to be done by the responsible maintainers for their component. Fred will offer the necessary code changes and offers pull requests for them.

Postponed

1. Extended Test and Item Statistics
2. Plugin Slot for Test and Item Statistics
3. Streamlining Tabs and Tables in Test and Survey
4. Bulletin presentation for Survey Results
5. Revamp Indication of Questions Blocks
6. Improving the Printing of Survey Results
7. E-Mail notification to the participant of a survey
8. List of participants in an anonymous survey
9. Course-badge awarded for selected set of completed objects

4.5 Lists of Suggested Features

The following lists are auto-generated and show all feature requests that are already marked with the metadata ‘Suggestions for 5.2’ but not scheduled yet. If you want the Jour Fixe to discuss one of these requests, just add the feature title to the list above.

Suggested features for 5.2 with announced funding

Suggested features for 5.2 with partly funding

Suggested features for 5.2 that require funding

4.6 Features suggested to abandon

5 Miscellaneous

• Official Nginx Support - postponed to the next JF

Brainstorming

• Improve Session Ending - postponed to a later JF
• Improvement of import and export - postponed to a later JF

Next Jour Fixe

Monday, June 20, 2016, from 12h30 until 17h30 at the office of ILIAS-Verein in Cologne.