JourFixe-2016-08-29

Date and place: Monday, August 29, 2016 from 12:30 – 17h10 at ILIAS-Verein office in Köln

• Participating via Skype (audio): please contact ilias.jourfixe to get invited to call!
• Screencast via BBB: http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto_docu_xbbb_5173.html

Participants: Amstutz, Timon [amstutz] (via Skype) • Killing, Alexander [alex] • Jansen, Michael [mjansen] • Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle] • Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel] • • Meyer, Stefan [smeyer] • Schmid, Fabian [fschmid] (via Skype) • Vollbach, Guido [gvollbach]

1 Appointments

• August 31, 2016: 5.2.0 beta1
• September 07, 2016: DevConf Utrecht
• September 12, 2016: Jour Fixe

2 Maintained Versions

2.1 Roadmap

Last releases:

• ILIAS 5.1.8 published at August 03, 2016
• ILIAS 5.0.14 published at August 10, 2016
• ILIAS 4.4.15 published at May 27, 2015 (maintenance ended with this release)

• ILIAS 5.2.0 beta1 is scheduled for August 31, 2016
• ILIAS 5.1.9 is scheduled for September 2016
• ILIAS 5.0.15 is scheduled for October 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:

• #17126: Failed test: Manipulierte Protokolldaten importieren (Status ‚Bearbeitet‘): we do not consider this being a bug but as a feature. Please create a feature wiki entry. We would support the idea of a new entry to store which user has changed a learning progress status.
• #18885: Changing multiple choice metadata fields leads to unexpected data loss in Wiki: We prefer solution [b] remove only the changed options. And we highly appreciate to remove DELETE as default. New default is "please select".
• #18731: After import of an objective driven course online status of learningmodule is offline: We consider this being a feature request. Since the introduction of the export of repository objects, all exported objects were always set offline when imported again. It would be nice to implement the same behaviour for export/import like for copying containers. This means: container is set offline, all embedded objects keep online/offline status like set in the original object. Together with such an extension of the export we would like to force a centralized online/offline handling for all object types.

Open bugs and Feedback

The new bug fixing process established last year should prevent that no or a very late reaction is given on new reported bugs. Therefore, a 21 days deadline has been defined in which a maintainer should have a look on a new reported bug and decide if additional feedback is needed, if it is a bug or not and if it can be fixed according to priorisation or not, see DevGuide and chap. 5.1 of the bug fixing process docu. In case of missing feedback on a new bug report after 21 days, the reporter could add the Mantis report to the Jour Fixe to push a decision. Current case is #18644: Select internal objects for LM menu links require view permissions of global role. But this process contradicts the current ambitions to relieve the Jour Fixe. The product manager would like to discuss this problem with the Technical Board and to find a feasable solution that avoids missing feedback and gives reporters a option to escalate a problem but without blowing up the Jour Fixe workload.

• We would like to have a statistic about the number of open bugs older than 21 days per maintainer. This list could become part of the JF agenda. This would give us valuable information about the current progress and performance of the bug fixing process.
• We agree with Matthias that discussing every single bug report older than 21 days that misses feedback blows up the Jour Fixe and should be avoided.
• Matthias suggests to check the list of open bugs older than 21 days and contact the developers if the number is constantly increasing.

2.3 Open Pull Requests

1. remove obsolete class ilInitialisation: Michael Jansen will contact Uwe Kohnle.

2.4 Continuous Integration

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

• Automated Tests:
  • 1532 passing tests on PHP 5.5, PHP 5.6, PHP 7.0, PHP 7.1 und hhvm
  • none failing
  • Unit Tests only!
• Dicto architectural tests: not working currently
• Experimental checking of Pull Requests.

3 Kitchen Sink

Discussed suggestions and made decisions of the UI Kitchen Sink workshop:

• none

Timon suggests to have a Kitchen Sink workshop with all interested developers in October to discuss and clarify how to proceed with the Kitchen Sink procedure and the discussion and approval of new UI elements. Timon will make a poll for a meeting and post it into the develop mailing list.

4 Publishing ILIAS 5.2

4.1 Status of 5.2 Development

Coding has been completed for Release 5.2. A first beta release will be published at August 31. ILIAS 5.2 contains the following 91 features:

Another 12 features have been scheduled for 5.2 but could not be implemented due to missing funding, open conceptual questions or missing manpower. These features will be set to status 'Not scheduled yet' on Monday, September 12 (before next Jour Fixe). If some of these features should be suggested for 5.3, please add them to the page 'Suggested for 5.3' or change the meta data accordingly (maintainer only). Same procedure for the 213 features with status 'Suggested for 5.2' that could not be treated by the Jour Fixe for various reasons (this status will be removed after September 12).

Re-scheduling: Features that already have been scheduled for 5.2 can easily be re-schudeled. This has to be done by the responsible maintainer and the product manager.

4.2 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: 4 (was 15)
    • Work in Progress: 0 (was 9)
    • Internal Testing: 0 (was 3)
    • Ready for Testcases: 170 (was 147)
• Next steps: problems should be posted to Dev list.
• PHP7 based test installation: We try to setup a PHP7 based test installation next week (August 22 - 26). Testing of ILIAS 5.2 will only made with PHP 7.
• Follow-up:
  • PEAR - will be removed by Stefan Meyer
  • Language: feedback on status needed from Fred Neumann
  • Licence: no maintainer. Matthias will contact Fred Neumann.
  • WebDAV: feedback from Stephan Winiker about current implementation status requested. Fabian will contact Stephan.

4.3 Updating Policy

• We decided that updating to ILIAS 5.2 requires an installation based on ILIAS 4.4 or higher. Straight update from 4.3 to 5.2 will not be supported. For installations using 4.3 or lower it is necessary to update first to 4.4, 5.0 or 5.1 before finally updating to 5.2.
• When updating from 4.4 or 5.0 to 5.2, this has to be done on a PHP 5.5 system first before updating the server to PHP 7.

4.4 Development Issues 5.2

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

• none

Development issues to be discussed / to be decided upon:

• Improving the Printing of Survey Results: hiding page elements while printing : We support Jörg's suggestion to use 'hidden print' to get rid of navigation elements in survey prints. Jörg will create a dedicated feature wiki page to clarify that this change affects other components in ILIAS too.
• …

4.5 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. This installation does not contain any plugins.
• An additional test installation for testing plugins is now available at http://www.ilias.de/test52/goto_plugins52_root_1.html. All users that already have a login at test52 (before August 29, 2016) have also a login at plugins52. The content of the installation will be revised in the next weeks. At the time being, there are no plugins running (due to missing 5.2 compatibility.
• Test rail is open for creating new test cases and improving existing ones for version 5.2.

5 Developing 5.3

The following features suggested for 5.3 have been set on the agenda to be discussed and to force their scheduling.

• Separate Domain for Anonymous Access: Highly appreciated and scheduled for 5.2. Feature is activated in 'Administration » General Settings : Basic Settings", new sub-option for 'Restrict Anonymous Access to Domain'. Multiple domains are possible.

6 Miscellaneous

• Move to JQuery 3:
  • Dev mode of 5.2 is currently using JQuery 3.0
  • Non-devmode uses 2.2.4 without migration.
  • We ask all developers to have a look at the JS console for possible errors.
  • We ask the TB for a final decision (if 5.2 uses 3.0 or 2.2.4).

Brainstorming

• Improve Session Ending: We shortly discussed some ideas today:
  • We could introduce a JS that is triggered before each form commit and even on links. This should first check on client side, if the time since the last request "is close to session ending time". If this is the case a call to the server could check if the session is really ended or not. In a next step a prolongation of the session via a modal dialog would be possible.
  • If the authentication mode does not allow this procedure, e.g. Shibboleth, at least a redirect to the login page shoud be made (messages in replaced divs should be avoided).
• Improvement of import and export: Postponed

Next Jour Fixe

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