JourFixe-2023-04-17

Date and place

Monday, 17 April 2023 from 13:00 – 15:55 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

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 : the end of maintenance of ILIAS 6 is scheduled for 26 April 2023. Release 6.24 will be the last published release for ILIAS version 6.
• 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. #36094: Datacollection with ref-field to "Link to an ILIAS module"-field: We prefer to abandon the option to add new entries by JS magic already with ILIAS 8 and to keep the behaviour in ILIAS 7. In case, additional entries should be added to a referenced table, users with permission Add Entry can always add an entry to this table, too - in case the settings are accordingly. A short abandon article would be highly appreciated (no need to be discussed at JF again).

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. PR5783 •  [FEATURE] CI: improved copyright-checker : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for trunk and release 8 - but for PHP files only. Please think about how to handle merged JS files (when minimised) with different licence headers (removing licence information is not allowed due to licence).
2. PR5800 • Services/Logging: Add PSR-3 README. Add $context parameter for ilLogger : Initiated by a security report, Michael gave a short presentation of the PR and notified us about proper logging according to PSR-3. In case, the PR is accepted by the responsible maintainer, all developers are pleased to have a look into the README and to consider the related recommendations.
3. PR • :

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)
    • 8906 (+11)
    • 21713 assertions (depends on the order of tests being executed / not stably determinable)
    • 14 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 Developing ILIAS 9

4.1 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

4.2 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

4.3 Development Issues

1. Update for Page Editor » Data Table Editing » Part II

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We follow the preferences of the maintainer and accept to show the view controls when editing cells, remove the cancel buttons, move the 'Merge' action to a separate view in the view control and keep the checkboxes to select the properties.

2. JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]

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

Status news:

Today, we discussed the "Legacy Confirmation Screen" further in a subgroup and are looking for a general solution for the use cases that are affected. Results will be communicated back to the working group. If necessary, PRs will be presented at the JourFixe.
 

Due to Easter, no further meeting took place in the meantime.
Next Bi-Weekly-Meeting: Monday, 24 APR 2023, 14:30 - 16:00

4.5 Suggested Features for 9

1. Show applied didactic template for item groups in settings: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature for ILIAS 9. As already stated in the posts above, the selection of Didactic Templates will not be moved but made available on the Settings screen, too.

2. Expandable Panel for Item Groups: We highly appreciate this suggestion but would like to clarify first if a new KS component has to be developerd or the existing panel be extended before scheduling the feature. We recommend to discuss this issue in the UI Clinic first.

3. Learning Modules: Migrate Page/Chapter Overview to Data Table: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature for ILIAS 9.

4. Display of POST Booking Information in the tab Reservations: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature for ILIAS 9.

5. Date entries for formula fields : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. It would be helpful to offer some information about possible operations in the Online Help.

6. Use Flavour for Tile-Image: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. The permission to see the tile image based on the file preview should be similar to the current presentation of the file preview. If no READ permission is given to user, the generated tile image / file preview is not shown. In this case, only the coloured default image of a file is presented.

7. Transferring Taxonomies in sub-tab Taxonomy of glo, qpl and cat to Listing Panels: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

8. Activating Taxonomies in glossaries and question pools : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

9. Abandon Taxonomy Filter as Navigation Tree : We highly appreciate this suggestion and abandon the feature with ILIAS 9. Please remove all language variables and test cases that will no longer be used.

10. Multiactions for Learning Progress: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature for ILIAS 9.

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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14. [[]]

    • Feature request presented by
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5 Developing ILIAS 10

5.1 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

5.2 Suggested Features for 10

No suggestions today to discuss.