JourFixe-2023-04-03

Date and place

Monday, 03 April 2023 from 13:00 – 18:00 at VC meeting in BBB.

If you like to participate at the Jour Fixe, please join our BigBlueButton-based Jour Fixe VC!
We recommend to use BBB in Chrome (or Firefox).

1 Appointments

2 Miscellaneous

2.1 UI Clinic

New Expert with a focus on Language: The TB and the current members of the UI/UX/A11y experts are very happy to announce a new member of the expert group. Grotz, Kendra [kgrotz] of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund will contribute a special perspective on language and thus add expertise in an aspect of UI/UX/A11y that has been underrepresented until now. We thank Kendra and the University of Applied Sciences and Art in Dortmund for their readiness to contribute in this central role to the improvement of ILIAS!

Our UI/UX/A11y experts Yvonne Seiler and Kristina Auerswald are offering bi-weekly UI clinic consultation hours for UI/UX and accessibility topics. The consultation hours are open for all users that need or are interested in related help for their ILIAS development activities. The UI Clinic consultation hours take place every Tuesday before Jour Fixe from 14h30 to 15h00.

If you are interested in discussing an issue, please register here!

2.2 Style Guide for English Language

Our expert for English language, Chris Potter, has created a Style Guide for English Language in ILIAS to help developers when writing English labels and bylines. Major aim is to improve the quality and the consistence of the English language file. We kindly please all developers to have a look at this style guide and follow its recommendations!

In addition, Chris is currently revising the entire ilias_en.lang for ILIAS 8 and corrects and streamline the texts. This already came with a couple of commits in the last weeks (and still will go on).

In case of questions to the style guide or the correct use of English language in ILIAS, please feel free to contact Chris.

2.3 Maintainerships

2.3.1 Maintainerships to be Handed Over

The following maintainerships are offered for takeover by another developer:

• Administration: Alexander Killing and Stefan Meyer (2nd maintainer) would like to hand over maintainership of Services/Administration to an interested developer. Code is in good state and the service ready to be used with PHP 8.
• Tree: Stefan Meyer would like to hand over the maintainership for /Services/Tree to an interested developer in the nearer future.

Developers willing to take over this maintainership are highly appreciated. Please contact the Technical Board if you are interested in taking over the maintainership.

2.3.2 New Maintainerships

• none

3 Maintained Versions

At the time being, we are maintaining ILIAS version 6, version 7 and Version 8.

3.1 Roadmap

Lifecycles of maintained versions

• ILIAS 6 : due to the delay of ILIAS 8, the end of maintenance of ILIAS 6 is now announced for 26 April 2023.
• ILIAS 7 : end of maintenance of ILIAS 7 is expected for April 2024. At this time, ILIAS 9 will hopefully be available as a stable release. 

3.2 Mantis 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. #33460: File - Copy schüler vs. Copy eltern: Fabian notified us about the problem of special characters in text strings and asked how we should proceed to tackle this problem. We suggest to organise a workshop with all interested developers.
2. #36503: Failed test: Automatische Rückmeldung und Antwort festschreiben: We fully agree with the UI clinic's suggestion and would like to hide the coloured feedback bar when no textual feedback is given. Bug fix accepted for 7, 8 and trunk.
3. #36506: Failed test: Ergebnisse eines einzelnen Teilnehmers anzeigen lassen: Denis notified us that at the time being ILIAS 8 does not allow to create usable PDF exports. We hope the issue will be fixed quickly, Until then, PDF support in ILIAS 8 is not given at all.
4. #36855: Manual Scoring by Participant: Manual feedback not saved if question has "Scoring completed" set via 'Scoring by Question': We follow the maintainer's suggestion to add the checkbox "Scoring completed" to Scoring by Participants" to fix this issue for 7, 8 and trunk.
5. #:

Postponed to next Jour Fixe:

1. #:

3.3 Mantis Statistic

Mantis 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

Reports with status 'Fixing according to priorisation' should be fixed before other bugs are tackled. Priorised bugs are 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.

3.4 Development Issues of Maintained Versions

The following development issues concern one or more maintained versions. Issues related to upcoming versions have to be added in chapter 4.

1. JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]:

3.5 Open Pull Requests to Discuss

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

1. PR5675 • Memberships: Fix recipient selection for subscribers : Stefan will have a look at the PR as soon as possible.
2. PR5688 • UI Repository Item Concept Proposal (ILIAS 9) : Yvonne and Ferdinand presented the current concept of a new UI element for repository items and how the item's properties could be presented in an improved way. Yvonne explained why the concept knows two areas for availability properties and that the blocking conditions should be more prominent while other properties do not need to be highlighted. We discussed if the concept should be more generalised but prefer to focus on repository objects. Concept is highly appreciated and accepted for trunk.
3. PR5720 • Cron: Allow local authentication only (without password) : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for release_8 and trunk. We recommend to define a rule that cronjob must not check permissions to allow a cron user with only a little amount of permissions. Michael will check if the cron user could get the Anonymous role for this purpose. Please add related documentation at least to the cron README in GitHub and the cron chapter within the LM "Installation and Maintenance".
4. PR5726 • Moved existing ilGlobalCache usages to new Service : We highly appreciate the suggestion and accept the PR for trunk. Fabian will contact all involved maintainers of other components to check the refactored code and give their Go!
5. PR5729 • Cron: Replace int schedule type with Enum : Michael notified us about a breaking change in cronjobs that come with this PR. We highly appreciate his suggestion and accept the PR for trunk.
6. PR5762 • Object: Implement KS-Forms for Common Properties : We highly appreciate Stephan's suggestion and accept the PR for trunk.

Postponed to next JF:

1. PR • :

3.6 Continuous Integration

• Michael Jansen gave a short overview on CI.
• Unit Tests:
  • There are hundreds (=1004) of deprecation warnings (95% = Creation of dynamic property) when executing the unit test suite with PHP 8.2!
  • As of today, there are (executed with PHP 8.1)
    • 8895 (+93)
    • 21735 assertions (depends on the order of tests being executed / not stably determinable)
    • 14 (+1) skipped unit tests
      • 1 x \TagInputTest::testUserCreatedNotAllowed
      • 10 x T&A
      • 1 x \ilServicesPreviewTest::testRendererFactory
      • 1 x tests/ResourceStorage/Consumer/AccessTokenTest.php
      • 1 x Services/Style/System/test/Style/ilSkinFactoryTest.php
    • 1 incomplete unit test
      • \ilSessionTest::testPasswordAssisstanceSession

4 ILIAS 8

• 73 features became part of ILIAS 8.
• A new section for migrations has been added to the release page, see here
  • All migration steps will be also mentioned on the release page

4.1 Timeline for ILIAS 8

• Feature freeze at 30 APR 2021
• PHP-8-Reviews completed until 28 APR 2022
• Coding completed for refactored components: 11 MAY 2022
• Incorporating results of reviews: 26 MAY 2022 to 13 JUN 2022
• Final check of components by their maintainers on 14 and 15 JUN 2022
• Pre-Testing from 16 JUN 2022 until 22 JUL 2022
• Incorporating of Pre-Test results: 20 JUN 2022 until 28 JUL 2022
• Release 8.0 beta1 and release-8 branch published at 29 JUL 2022
• Begin of testing phase started at 01 AUG 2022
• Run all test cases once at 05 DEC 2022
• First stable 8.0 release published at 31 MAR 2023
  
• Full maintenance for version 8: until 31 DEC 2024
• Security bugfixes only: until 31 DEC 2025

4.2 Software Requirements for ILIAS 8

Required and supported software for ILIAS 8 is as follows:

• ILIAS 8 requires PHP 7.4 or 8.0.
• ILIAS 8 will not support PHP 8.1. Reasons are:
  • It is not possible to support the range of PHP 7.4 - 8.1 in a single release without suppressing E_DEPRECATED errors for 8.1, and we don't want to soften our error reporting policy for future releases of ILIAS.
  • We can't guarantee all our dependencies are compatible with PHP 8.1 until the beta release.
  • Nevertheless, all component maintainers and contributors MUST provide commits with passing unit tests for the PHP 8.1 build.
  • If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the Technical Board.
• Support for PHP 7.3 has been dropped!
• PostgreSQL support is abandoned.
• OpenJDK 11 shall be supported for ilServer.

4.3 Final Test Status

• 4582 Passed = 98%
• 10 Blocked = <1%
• 34 Retest = <1%
• 57 Failed = 1%
• 0 untested

Other Issues

As of 3 APR, there are 550 open issues (last JF: 607) in Mantis selecting the following filters:

• Major Version: 8.x
• Hide Status: Resolved (and above)
• Resolution: open
• Fixed in Version: none

A selection of these issues has been included with the release notes of ILIAS 8.

New Test Cases for ILIAS 9

• Remaining test runs will be closed this week. After that, changes/additions to all test suites are possible.

5 Developing ILIAS 9

5.1 Timeline for ILIAS 9

Due to the changed timeline of ILIAS 8 we had to fundamentally change the schedule for ILIAS 9. The aim was to secure sufficient resources for the completion of ILIAS 8 and to take away the time pressure for the programming of ILIAS 9. In short, the release plan for ILIAS 9 has been postponed by one year.

• Feature freeze at April 30, 2023: deadline to suggest new features for this version
• Coding completed: all features implemented and test cases finished until October 27, 2023
• Release 9.0 beta1 and release-9 branch planned for October 30, 2023
• Beginn of testing phase scheduled for October 31, 2023
• End of testing phase planned for Februar 02, 2024
• First stable 9.0 release planned for March 15, 2024
• Full maintenance support for version 9: until December 31, 2025
• Security bug fixes only: until December 31, 2026

5.2 Software Requirements for ILIAS 9

The required and supported software for ILIAS 9 is as follows:

1. PHP:
   • ILIAS 9 will support PHP 8.1 and 8.2.
   • Support for PHP 7.4 and 8.0 will be dropped.
2. PHPUnit: 10.x
3. Composer: Composer 2
4. DBMS:
   • MariaDB: 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 (we recommend to use MariaDB)
   • MySQL:  8.0
5. HTTP:
   • nginx:
     • Supported: 1.12.x  - 1.18.x
     • Recommended: 1.18.x
   • Apache >= 2.4.x
6. JAVA:
   • JAVA 8 when using ilServer.jar
   • JAVA 11 when installing Maven (see related feature request)
7. NodeJS:
   • Supported: 16 (LTS) + maybe next LTS version (has to be evaluated when released), 17, 18
   • Recommended: 16 (LTS)
8. Other Software:
   • Imagemagick:
     • Supported/Recommended: 6.8, 6.9
   • Ghostscript:
     • Supported/Recommended: 9.51
   • MathJax (optional): Supported 2.7 and >=3.2, Recommended: 2.7

5.3 Development Issues

1. Killing, Alexander [alex] would like to discuss the development issue described under chap. 3.2.10. of FR Page Editor » Data Table Editing » Part II

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 03 APR 2023: We discussed the 'Edit Cell Properties' screen, see 3.2.10. We see three issues:

   • Do we want to show the 'Edit Table' and 'Edit Cell' buttons on this screen (and remove the Cancel button because it is no longer needed when a user can leave the screen by clicking on one of the buttons?
   • Do we want to have a separate view for 'Merge Cells' and remove the related button from the Edit Cell Properties screen to prevent user confusion?
   • Do we have another option instead of checkboxes to edit cell properties separately?

   We postpone the decision for two weeks to give some time for finding reasonable solutions for all three issues. Dev issue will be set again on next JF agenda.

   Yvonne suggests to discuss issue and find solutions at the next UI Clinic at 11 APR, 15.00-16.00 Uhr: https://docu.ilias.de/goto_docu_dcl_8186_166.html

2. JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]

5.4 Project 'Removing of Legacy-UIComponents-Service and Table'

Status news:

The possibilities for compensation of Legacy Confirmation Screen were discussed.

For this and for the compensation of some legacy button classes, there will be meetings in smaller groups with the concerned maintainers and other stakeholders.
 

Next Bi-Weekly-Meeting: Monday, 24 APR 2023, 14:30 - 16:00

5.5 Suggested Features for 9

1. Password Storage: Support Argon2 Hashes: We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

2. Abandon »Sticky Threads Sorting« in Forum: We highly appreciate this suggestion and abandon the feature with ILIAS 9.

3. Revamp Thread-Tab of Forum: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. Please add a notice to the feature description that

   • it will no longer be possible to move several threads to another forum at once.
   • it will no longer be possible to export single threads to HTML.

4. Improve Navigation in Videocast view: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. We prefer to extend the existing Section View Control and allow a dropdown as input.

5. Comments for Mediacast Items: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. 

6. Supported Formats for Media Objects : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. We would like to support WebM, too - in case this format will be supported by the KS Audio/Video Player.

7. Define preview for videos inserted by the ILIAS page editor: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

8. Improve Navigation / Mobile View: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. We discuss the question of having navigation elements also at the end of the page or offering a 'Top' button to go on top of the page quickly in a separate request. This request will only offer navigation and submit buttons on top. Removing 'Hamburger' and offering a dropdown instead is fine for us.

   Postponed to next Jour Fixe

9. Show applied didactic template for item groups in settings

   • Feature request presented by Killing, Alexander [alex]
   • Requested time slot 15'

10. Expandable Panel for Item Groups

    • Feature request presented by Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen]
    • Requested time slot 15'

11. [[]]

    • Feature request presented by
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12. [[]]

    • Feature request presented by
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13. [[]]

    • Feature request presented by
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6 Developing ILIAS 10

6.1 Timeline for ILIAS 10

• Feature freeze at April 30, 2024
  
• Coding completed: all features implemented and test cases finished until October 25, 2024
• Release 10.0 beta1 and release-10 branch planned for October 28, 2024
• Beginn of testing phase scheduled for October 30, 2024
• End of testing phase planned for Februar 05, 2025
• First stable 10.0 release planned for March 13, 2025
• Full maintenance support for version 10: until December 31, 2026
• Security bug fixes only: until December 31, 2027

6.2 Suggested Features for 10

No suggestions today to discuss.