JourFixe-2019-03-25

Date and place

Monday, March 25, 2019 from 13:00 – 18:15 at ILIAS-Verein office in Köln

Participants

At ILIAS office:

• Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel] (Minutes), Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen] (Chat Moderation), Meyer, Stefan [smeyer], Jansen, Michael [mjansen], Strassner, Denis [dstrassner], Famula, Thomas [tfamula]

•  Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila], Schmid, Fabian [fschmid], Killing, Alexander [alex], Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle], Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt], Lorenz, Katharina [klorenz], Heer, Raphael [rheer], Studer, Martin [mstuder], Klees, Richard [rklees],  Heyser, Björn [bheyser], Rabah, Rachid [rabah]

If you like to participate at the Jour Fixe via Skype, please join our Skype meeting!

1 Appointments

• Workshop 'General Layout and Menu Revision: Member View Mechanism', April 03, 10:00 - 12:00 in Skype

If you want to participate at one of the above mentioned workshops, please register for the related session. This helps to organise the workshop. Thanks!

2 Maintained Versions

2.1 Roadmap

Last releases:

• ILIAS 5.4.0 published at March 20, 2019
• ILIAS 5.3.13 published at February 14, 2019
• ILIAS 5.2.22 published at February 14, 2019

• ILIAS 5.4.1 scheduled for April 2019
• ILIAS 5.3.14 scheduled for April 04, 2019
• ILIAS 5.2.23 scheduled for April 2019

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:

1. #24823: bootstrap column layout within PDF exports unsupported : Due to the fact that 5.2 will be set to deprecated in the next three to five month we recommend not to add an additional HTML table for 5.2 to fix this presentation problem. Problem has been solved for 5.3 and newer. For 5.2 users we recommend to use the plugin "TestArchiveCreator" by Fred Neumann.
2. #24962: HTML application performance issues : Problem might be related to Web Access Checker. Report has been assigned to Fabian who will add some additional information to this report.
3. #25064: T&A/Tracking: Conceptual issue with a date set for setting 'Access to Test Results' and the learning progress status : Stefan Meyer, Björn Heyser and Matthias Kunkel will discuss this issue next week in a VC and present a solution in one of the next JF.

• …

2.3 Bugfixing Statistic

Bug reports[1] set to status 'open' and not been touched by responsible maintainer for more than 21 days (checked this morning) as well as bug reports with priorisation voting:

* New votes: bugs priorised within the last 14 days   ** Old votes: priorised bugs before last JF (older then 14 days)   *** Resolved: Resolved or closed bug reports in the last 14 days

Bug reports with status 'Fixing according to priorisation' should be fixed before other bugs are tackled. Priorised bugs very important for one or more institutional members of the ILIAS society. Handling this reports with low priority contradicts the intention of the established bug fixing process.

2.4 Open Pull Requests to Discuss

The following pull requests in the ILIAS GitHub repository were marked with 'Jour Fixe' this morning:

1. PR1253 • UI Filters: We accept the change compared to our decision from June 2018 concerning the behaviour of expand and activation of the filter on desktop. Behaviour should be similar on mobile and desktop. Expand and actvation should be separated. Using AJAX calls instead of page reloads is fine for us. We also accept the new function getUpdateOnLoadCode for every input.
2. PR1614 • Documentation for Repository Pattern: We accept this pull request. Factories can be used with repositories as required. If anyone wants to expand the documentation in this regard we will be happy.
3. PR1617 • Chatroom: Changed supported Node.js verisons: Highly appreciated and accepted for 6.0
4. PR1620 • UI Drilldown: We highly appreciate this PR and accept it for 6.0. In case of problems during implementation of this UI element for features in 6.0, please add a new PR to modify the current suggestion.
5. PR1637 • README: Added required PHP version: No objections have been made on the linked wiki page. Therefore, we accept this PR and set PHP 7.2 as minimum PHP version for ILIAS 6.0. PR accepted.
6. PR1639 • Documentation: Changed required/supported PHP versions:  No objections have been made on the linked wiki page. Therefore, we accept this PR and set PHP 7.2 as minimum PHP version for ILIAS 6.0. PR for change of documentation accepted. We pick up this topic again in summer to decide if we include also PHP 7.4 in this list.
7. PR1646 • Proposal: Add UI Links to UI Dropdowns: PR is highly appreciated and accepted for 6.0.
8. PR1667 • Return configured http_path if it is set in ilUtil::_getHttpPath: We reject and close this pull request for two reasons: (1) the procedure for pull requests has been ignored. Either a PR is labeled as a bug. Then a related bug report should be mentioned. Or the PR is considered as an improvement. In this case a related feature wiki page should be mentioned that describes the problem and the suggested solution. (2) As far as we have understood this PR (a clear description of the problem is missing) it will have a deep impact into existing features and break several of them that are currently fundamental for ILIAS, e.g. sub domain support, public section feature depending on sub domains, ... If you need a better support for your plugins, please create a feature wiki entry and respect the procedures that we have agreed upon in this project.
9. PR1685 • UI Tree: We highly appreciate this PR and accept it for 6.0. Please add the possibility of highlighting the current position of the user within the repository (as already known from the existing tree implementation). And we invite all users to add additional PR in case the implementation of the UI tree for features in 6.0 leads to problems or make workarounds necessary.

• none

2.5 Continuous Integration

Overview on current status and reports from CI-server at http://ci.ilias.de and https://travis-ci.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/builds:

• automated tests: 3625 (+2 passing unit tests on PHP 7.0, PHP 7.1, PHP 7.2 since JF 2019-02-25
  • PHP 7.2 is now added as testing environment for trunk and release_5-4
  •  Please have a look into the skipped and incomplete tests in: Workflow Engine, Test and Assessment
  • Feel free to contact Klees, Richard [rklees] for support!
• results of dicto architectural tests
  • 1 (net) violation added since JF 2019-03-10
  • WholeIliasCodebase cannot invoke ExitOrDie:
    • https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/blob/5cd4305a9515933ce2c522b130024dac39c938f9/Services/MyStaff/classes/ListCourses/class.ilMStListCoursesGUI.php#L136
    • https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/blob/5cd4305a9515933ce2c522b130024dac39c938f9/Services/MyStaff/classes/ListUsers/class.ilMStListUsersGUI.php#L109
    • This shows that we need some solution for async handlers.
• Please run unit tests locally before committing.

Performance monitoring:

• Pascal updated his test installation to PHP 7.2. Performance tests of trunk are currently not running, esp. the repository. PHP 7.2-related bugs need to be fixed first before continuing performance testing.

3 Publishing 5.4

Release 5.4.0 has been published at March 20, 2019. 109 features have been implemented for ILIAS release 5.4, see Release 5.4.

3.1 Release Cycle for Version 5.4

In accordance with the Technical Board the product manager decided to set the documentation of implementation of a feature as another requirement to get an implemented feature into trunk. This information helps testers to understand the feature they have to test and improves the understanding of the feature for users. This requirement is effective from ILIAS version 5.4. Similar to test cases and approval, the documentation of implementation on the feature wiki page needs to be completed until October 29, 2018 for version 5.4.

3.2 Development Issues in 5.4

none

3.3 Status of Testing

• Test installation for ILIAS 5.4 is available at test54.ilias.de.
• Testing has started at November 02, 2018 and ended officially at  January 31, 2019.
• All test cases have been run at least once at February 10, 2019.
• Bugfixing has been finished at March 18, 2019.
• Release 5.4.0 has been published with 98% passed test cases at March 20, 2019.
• Status of test cases compared to last Jour Fixe:
  • Passed: 3807 (97%) → 3853 (98%) ⇒ +46
  • Blocked: 10 (0%) → 11 (0%) ⇒ +1
  • Retest: 29 (1%) → 12 (0%) ⇒ -17
  • Failed: 95 (2%) → 65 ⇒ -30

4 Developing ILIAS 6.0

4.1 Developing Issues in 6.0

1. Session Registration Notifications

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We accept the suggestion to adapt the notification procedure to the known one from courses and groups. But we still need a good suggestion how to handle the problem of presenting this new column. We would like to avoid more clutter on this table. One option could be to handle this notification as an additional feature that needs to be enabled in the session settings to be presented in the column. Matthias and Michael will work out a suggestion for the next JF.

2. Required and Supported Software ILIAS 6

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We keep the discussion open until next Jour Fixe. This will allow us to collect some feedback from DevConf participants this week.

4.2 Feature Requests for ILIAS 6.0

The following suggestions were made for ILIAS version 6.0 which should be published in March 2020.

1. Abandon Chat Viewer Block on Personal Desktop : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the removal of the chat viewer block from the Personal Desktop for 6.0.

2. Permission to Upload Blacklisted Files :  We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for 6.0 with the following modifications:

   • Permission to bypass blacklist should not require to have access to administration node of Files. Permission check using 'RBACSystem' should be sufficient to avoid that an additional global role has to be created for getting administration access.
   • The blacklist should become a own input. Current negative list of whitelist should be kept because files with this file ending still can be uploaded but are renamed while blacklisted files are really blocked from being uploaded.

3. Membership History :  We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for 6.0 with the following modifications:

   • Please include also the following actions to the enrolment log:
     • User joined
     • Added manually
     • Add from waitinglist manually
     • Autofill from waitinglist (by ILIAS)
   • Additional filter for all supported actions (multi-select)
   • Start and end of logging shall be displayed in all enrolment logs.

4. Placeholder for «Mail to Course Member» : We highly appreciate this feature request and schedule it for 6.0. Please indicate in the feature request where the information for the "superior" comes from.

5. Streamline LaTeX usage : We highly appreciate this suggestion and see it as an important step towards a streamlined handling of LaTeX support in ILIAS. Concerning the delimiters we recommend to contact the SIG Mathe Digital to find out which is the preferred one.

6. Course Catalogue : postponed to next JF

   • Feature request presented by Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]
   • Length of slot: 30'

7. Study Programme: Add link to course that was passed : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 6.0.

8. Study Programme: Link-Object : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 6.0. Support of learning progress will be tackled in a general request for LP support in container objects. The custom icon of the target study programme should be re-used by the study programme link - similar to other link objects. Permission handling should be similar to other link objects, too.

9. Set Badges to Deck of Cards : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule it for 6.0. We prefer the presentation of badges without the issue date.

10. Scaffolded Exercise : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for 6.0.

11. Notification Center : Postponed to next Jour Fixe

    • Feature request presented by Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen]
    • Length of slot: 30'

5 Miscellaneous

Mantis 

Schmid, Fabian [fschmid] Proposal to make the field "Reproduction steps" in Mantis a mandatory field. Often we first have to ask for these steps in order to be able to find a mistake at all. We realize that there are also many bugs where this is not necessary, you could simply enter "none" or a comment.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: Matthias will check if report pushing from Testrail is still possible when "Reproduction steps" become a mandatory field.

Next Jour Fixe dates

• Monday, April 08, 13:00 - 18:00
• Wednesday, April 24, 13:00 - 18:00 (changed date due to Eastern)
• Tuesday, May 07, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, May 20, 13:00 - 18:00

Layout Revision 6.0 working group

Virtual Meeting every Friday, 11:00 - 12:00

• Weekly Meeting that deals with the project management of the General Layout and Menu Revision. Due to the complexity of the project, we coordinate the next steps and define responsibilities. If you want to stay in contact and get information about the project, feel free to join the Working Group and attend our VC.