JourFixe-2021-01-25

Date and place

Monday, 25 January 2021 from 13:00 – 17:35 as 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

• 01 FEB 2021, 14:00 - 16:00: Bi-Weekly of Working Group 'Splitting-up Test&Assessment'
• 02 FEB 2021, 10:00 - 12:00: Feature Workshop 'Improve Usability 360° Feedback Survey'

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 7.0_beta2 published at 18 DEC 2020
• ILIAS 6.6 published at 27 NOV 2020
• ILIAS 5.4.19 published at 11 DEC 2020

• ILIAS 7.0_beta3 scheduled for 29 JAN 2021
• ILIAS 6.7 scheduled for 05 FEB 2021
• ILIAS 5.4.20 scheduled for 29 JAN 2021

Due to the extraordinary workload in all e-learning teams based on the Covid pandemia, the technical board and product manager decided to extend the maintenance of ILIAS version 5.4 until end of 2021. This will give all ILIAS using institutions enough time for the migration from 5.4 to 6 or 7.

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. #26267: nachträgliche Parallelgruppen werden nicht übertragen: We follow the suggestion of the maintainer to close this bug because there is currently no support of IDs anymore and to ask for a feature request to tackle the problem with ILIAS 8. There are patches provided by FH Dortmund and Uni Freiburg for their installations. But we cannot merge them to the existing code due to problems with backwards compatibility. Hopefully, the new SIG CampusConnect can take care of this issue and probably prepare a request until Feature Freeze end of April.
2. #29420: Manuelle Bewertung: "Bewertung nach Frage" nicht alphabetisch sortierbar: We follow the maintainer's suggestion and highly appreciate this bug fix for all maintained versions.
3. #29510: Resource Storage Service to store files: Fabian Schmid gave us a status update about the current implementation of the Resource Storage Service and the implementation plans for ILIAS 8. The mentioned issues will be tackled with 8, not yet with 7 (where the service has only been implemented for the file service). For the mentioned component there is no change yet compared to former ILIAS versions and therefore no bug. This is why we close this report. Fabian will connect the component maintainers in the near future do discuss and plan how the service will be implemented for the related components until Coding Completed of ILIAS 8.
4. #29668: CSS-ID has no function: Please remove the no longer used column for CSS ID in 6, 7 and trunk.

1. …

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 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 3.

1. On Monday, December 07, 2020 we decided (https://docu.ilias.de/goto_docu_wiki_wpage_6619_1357.html#ilPageTocA2112) to extend the maintenance for ILIAS 5.4.x. Does this affect the official support for current PHP versions (PHP 7.3., 7.4) for ILIAS 5.4.x as well?

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We do not extend PHP support for ILIAS 5.4 to PHP 7.4. We cannot provide serious testing for 5.4 on this PHP version. And maintainers haven't been aware to offer bug fixing support on 5.4 for these versions, too. If institutions want to update to a newer PHP version they should update ILIAS, too.

2.5 Open Pull Requests to Discuss

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

1. PR3049 • PHP 8: Apply changes for first request: We highly appreciate the TB's suggestion and accept the merge of this PR to trunk at the foreseen date. We ask all maintainers to give the requested feedback in time.
2. PR3081 • CI: Implemented github actions as replacement for travis: We highly appreciate Laura's PR and accept it for versions 6, 7 and trunk. We ask the TB if it wants to call for an investigation on an alternative project to shivammathur/setup-php@v2 to reduce the risk of dependency in case this one-man-project comes suddenly to an end.
3. PR3083 • Add Composer 2 Support for ILIAS 7 (with rebuilt composer.lock): We highly appreciate this PR and accept it for ILIAS 7.
4. PR3084 • Add Composer 2 Support for trunk (with rebuilt composer.lock): We highly appreciate this PR and accept it for trunk.
5. PR3087 • UI Component Item, Listing Panel: Fixing Title, see #29616: We highly appreciate this PR and accept it for versions 6 and 7 and trunk. The PR reminds us to pick-up again the improvement of the current headline scheme.

2.6 Continuous Integration

• At the time being, our Travis installation for CI is not running due to a changed "business model" of the new Travis owner. We are currently looking for a new solution. Until then, we kindly ask all developers to have a special look on the results of their local unittests (as there will be no warning by Travis at the moment).
  • A PR for move to GitHub Actions is available.
• We currently have 5326 automated test for the trunk, which is the +24 compared to 2021-01-11.

3 Publishing ILIAS 7

Timeline for ILIAS 7:

• All features implemented and test cases completed until November 12, 2020
• Release 7.0 beta1 published and release-7 branch crated at November 13, 2020
• Testing phase started at November 16, 2020
• End of testing phase planned for February 12, 2021
• First stable 7.0 release planned for March 26, 2021

3.1 Status of Testing 7

64 features have been developed for Release 7 and merged until deadline of 'Coding Completed'. They are tested now by the community testers.

• Testing of ILIAS 7 has started at 16 NOV 2020.
• All test cases have to be executed once until 12 FEB 2021.
• Retesting and bugfixing has to be completed at 24 MAR 2021 at the latest.

Testing Status this morning

Today, test week 10 has started. Still 3 weeks[2] to go!

For the following test suites testing has not started yet. We kindly ask all responsible testers to start there tests in the next two weeks to run all test cases at least once before end of testing at 12 FEB 2021!

• Cloud Object
• cmi5/xAPI
• Cron Service
• Data Collection
• LM SCORM 2004
• LTI
• Metadata
• Online Help
• SCORM Offline Player
• User Service
• WebDAV
• Workflow Engine

Additional information

• The official test installation for ILIAS version 7 is at test7.ilias.de.
• All test suites to test ILIAS 7 are available in our Testrail installation.
• We are looking for testers! Please contact our test manager Kruse, Fabian [Fabian] if you want to join our testing team.

3.2 Development Issues

Development issues and topics related to ILIAS versions 7

1. Kergomard, Stephan [skergomard] 20 jan 2021: With the decision to implement ad-hoc migrations in the file service (see #29511) the question comes up, if WebDAV should migrate files on write. As WebDAV doesn't provide a way to give detailed error messages, we would suggest to migrate files to the new file service on write. We could alternatively just put a notice in the error_file, but we think this will not be noticed by most and thus would lead to more support request. We also believe that it should be possible to handle the load, if we only migrate on write.

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We highly appreciate Stephan's suggestion and accept to automatically migrate files to the new resource service on write.

4 Developing ILIAS 8

4.1 Suggested Features for 8

1. Improved presentation of competence profiles : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the feature request for ILIAS 8. We accept option A as suggested by Thomas.

2. Completion Status for Competence Profiles : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature for ILIAS 8. We accept the latest change to display the progress meter as property to extend the options of this view.

3. Extend Permissions of Competence Management : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature as decided in the last JF for ILIAS 8.

4. Transfer of competences into a reporting panel : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature for ILIAS 8. Concerning the presentation of the hint to fill out the self evaluation we prefer:

   • to have one message box below the page title that notifies users in case a self-evaluation is missing for at least one competence,
   • to present a text for each competence that notifies users that they have to make a self-evaluation first before seeing recommende material, and
   • to offer a link to the self-evaluation in the provided text of the competence.

5. Tile View: Adjustable number of tiles in a row : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature for ILIAS 8, incl. the suggested feature for a full sized card presentation.

6. Customizable List/Tile View for Modules/ItemGroup : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 8.

7. Page Editor » Presentation of Item Groups in Page Editor : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature for ILIAS 8. In case the last embedded object within an item group is deleted, the item group appears empty on the bottom of the page and is not deleted automatically (option 1 in chap. 3.2).

8. Inherit Individual Stylesheet from Parent Object : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 8. The feature should be available for container and non-container objects. We suggest to move the setting "Provide content style" from "Additional Features" section to the tab "Style" where one has to create the distinct style of the course. Import/export and copying should keep style information of embedded objects.

9. Improve Content-Style-Editor : We still want this feature request very much. But before scheduling the request finally we need one final description of the request in chap. 2 that adapts the several changes, modifications and extension made and decided since the very beginning of the request in 2017. Please present the request again when this feature page has been updated accordingly.

10. Learning Module ILIAS and HTML: «Info» tab can be switched off and Functionality moves to«Learning Progress»-tab : We highly appreciate this suggestion and re-schedule the feature as already suggested and accepted at the Jour Fixe in 2018. The product manager will create a separate feature request to handle a general deactivation of Info pages for all components that are already supporting this feature (category, content page). Additionally, a second feature request will be presented to allow the setting of learning progress in the Actions dropdown for other components that allow manual setting of LP status (e.g. content page).

11. Blog Improvements: Authors, Inputfield, Cleanup : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature as already decided on the JF in March 2020 incl. relabeling of "Permalink" to "Link".

5 Miscellaneous

Maintainerships

Denis Strassner who is already receiving all new bug reports for the Test & Assessment component takes over the first maintainership for T&A from Björn Heyser as 'Acting Maintainer'. Björn hasn't been active as maintainer any more for more than one year. While bugs are fixed by the second maintainer, Max Becker, Denis will focus on the filtering and priorising of bug reports and decide upon activities to improve the quality of the existing component.

Next Jour Fixe dates

• Monday, February 08, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, February 22, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, March 08, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, March 22, 13:00 - 18:00