JourFixe-2023-03-06

Date and place

Monday, 06 March 2023 from 13:00 –16:55 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

• Famula, Thomas [tfamula] and Schmitz, Tim [tschmitz] are the new maintainers of /Services/MyStaff and /Modules/EmployeeTalk. Thanks for taking over the responsibility for the two components.

2.4 Removal of Node Modules from Git-Repository

The Technical Board and the Product Manager would like to accept the PR #5128 and remove the node modules from the ILIAS repository. We will add them to the packed version of ILIAS and use this chance to improve it further by removing unneeded directories from the zip file. Thank you very much Wolf, Fabian [fwolf] for making this happen and Fuhrer, Thibeau [tfuhrer] for the PR!

2.5 Cleanup of data collection "Suggestions for Jour Fixe Agenda"

Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila] : To keep an overview of the "Suggestions for Jour Fixe Agenda", entries in the data collection that have not been modified for more than three months should be deleted.

3 Maintained Versions

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

3.1 Roadmap

Lifecycles of maintained versions

• ILIAS 6 : due to the delay of ILIAS 8, the end of maintenance of ILIAS 6 is expected for April 2023. At this time, ILIAS 8 will hopefully be available as a stable release.
  • Note: Only the most important fixes will be ported to Release 6. In general, it is recommended to update to version 7 as soon as possible.
• 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. #33699: Platzierung von "Erforderliche Eingabe": Thanks to all who contributed to this report, esp. Wolfgang and Kristina with their A11y background. We follow Wolfgang's suggestion and prefer solution (b): using the asterisk to identify recommended inputs and to explain the asterisk above and below the related form.
2. #35684: Buchung mit Präferenzen: keine Verteilung nach Deadline: Thanks for this solution of the issue. Please implement the new button as suggested but place it in the tab "Reservations" (as user might expect it there).
3. #36568: Weißer Bildschirm bei mehr als 100 Objekte in "Meine Kurse und Gruppen": Users that are responsible for a hugh amount of courses might have more than 100 items in this list without option to reduce the number (as long as they stay course or group admin). Therefore, we have to avoid that a white screen is shown when the list of course and group membership exceeds ~100. For technical reasons, a pagination is no option. Please check if the requests to build this list could be improved to avoid this use of memory. If this is not possible, a feature workshop would be highly recommended to offer a feasible solution for the presentation of this list.
4. #36629: Description-Feld mit "Characters remaining: [nnnn]": We prefer the current solution to display the number of remaining characters instead of cutting the text after 4.000 characters without notification. Other solutions are currently not possible. In the future, it would be highly appreciated to present the information about remaining characters only short before the limit is reached. But this would require a FR. Report closed.
5. #36852: Filter for Organistional Units does not show results from sub units: This issue tackles a general problem of filters (we have the same problem the tree up, e.g. superiors). Before we define the preferred behaviour, we recommend to hold a workshop and work out a feasible concept for questions like this. It is highly recommendet to have a unique and predictable behaviour for such filters in ILIAS to avoid user confusion and mis-expectations.

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. PR5181 • Proposal/9/zip unzip replacement : We highly appreciate this suggestion - especially the how-to - and accept the PR for trunk.
2. PR5593 • Updated Rector to latest version : Thanks for updating rector to the latest version. Accepted for trunk. Please merge.
3. PR5645 • Update Flysystem to version 3.x : Thanks for the update. Accepted to trunk, please merge.

Postponed to next JF:

1. PR5558 • UI: Launcher Component :

3.6 Continuous Integration

• Michael Jansen gave a short overview on CI.
• Unit Tests:
  • ILIAS 9: PHP 8.2 related problems with our unit tests could be already checked here https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/actions/runs/3249409651/jobs/5331780995
  • As of today, there are (executed with PHP 8.1)
    • 8766 (+124)
    • 21291 assertions (depends on the order of tests being executed / not stably determinable)
    • 13 (probably 14 skipped) unit tests (+1)
      • 1 x \TagInputTest::testUserCreatedNotAllowed
      • 10 x T&A
      • 1 x \ilServicesPreviewTest::testRendererFactory
      • 1 x tests/ResourceStorage/Consumer/AccessTokenTest.php
      • (1 x ILIAS\Tests\Data\LanguageTagTest::testRisky, depending on XDEBUG xdebug.max_nesting_level)
    • 1 incomplete unit test
      • \ilSessionTest::testPasswordAssisstanceSession

4 Publishing ILIAS 8

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 planned for 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 will support PHP 7.4 and 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 will be dropped!
• PostgreSQL support is abandoned.
• OpenJDK 11 shall be supported for ilServer.

4.3 Development Issues

1. [[]] :

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]:

2. JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]:

4.4 Testing ILIAS 8

Timetable

• Testing of ILIAS 8.0_beta1 has started at 01 AUG 2022.
• All test cases had to be executed at least once until 11 NOV 2022.
• The deadline for retesting and final bugfixing will be set depending on progress in bug fixing.
• A first stable release of ILIAS 8.0 is planned for March 2023.
  • Publishing a stable 8.0 requires that 98% of the test cases are passed successfully.

Status 06 MAR 2023

• 4427 Passed = 95% (+3%)
• 22 Blocked = <1% (-1%)
• 133 Retest = 3% (+2%)
• 101 Failed = 2% (-2%)
• 0 untested

Current Performance

• 100% passed: 53 Components (+2)
  • BUT: See "other issues" below!
• 29 Test Runs are still open with failed tests and available retests
• Test Runs with more than 10 Cases failed: 2 (-3)
  • Course Management
  • T&A
• Test Runs with more than 10 Cases blocked: 0

Other Issues

As of 6 MAR, there are 684 open issues (last JF: 813) in Mantis selecting the following filters:

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

204 of these issues have the title "Failed test". This implies that 480 (last JF: 484) have not been pushed from TestRail. PM asked maintainers to review these issues.

New Test Cases for ILIAS 9

• Problem: Adjustments to the test suites are automatically transferred to the current runs.
• Therefore: Please contact test manager before creating new cases!
  • If necessary, test manager will create copies of the test suites so that running tests are not affected.
  • As announced during the last JF, all test runs that are already at 100% passed get closed. Then, work can continue there.
    • Any newly found bugs can (and should) still be reported regularly through Mantis!

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: 9.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:
   • …
7. NodeJS:
   • Supported: 16 (LTS) + maybe next LTS version (has to be evaluated when released), 17, 18
   • Recommended: 16 (LTS)
8. PDF Generation:
   • wkhtmltopdf
     • Supported/Recommended: 0.12.6
9. Other Software:
   • unzip: 6.0+
   • zip: 3.0+
   • 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. Global Dashboard Settings of Presentation and Sortation for all Dashboard Sections
   Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila]:
   DevIssue 1) Process of removing multiple objects or memberships

   For a) 'Favourites' and b) 'Recommended Content', the action menu offers an option to 'remove multiple objects'. For c) 'My Course and Groups' and d) 'Learning Sequences', the action menu offers an option to 'unsubscribe multiple'. Both processes for all four dashboard section are identical in their operation.

   For a more modern design and to keep the context from where the action is called, we would like to run these two-step processes in a roundtrip modal. Possible contexts from where the dialogue could be called up are a) the dashboard, b) the own view of My Courses and Groups and c) the Favourites in the slate.

   corresponding MockUps

   

   

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We highly appreciate this suggestion. Please implement the modals as suggested.

2. Global Dashboard Settings of Presentation and Sortation for all Dashboard Sections
   Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila]:
   DevIssue 2) Composition of the Subtabs and Form Sections

   During the implementation, it became clear that the integration of the settings for Sortations in the "General" subtab is inappropriate. The menu design with the exception "Sort by Start date" for "My courses and groups" and the possible exception for the default sorting for this section is difficult to understand. 
   Furthermore, the option "Default Sortation" with "Sort by Type" for the panels "Learning Sequences" and "Study Programmes" is pretty nonsense.
   
   In addition, the positioning of the form section would make it impossible to sort the dashboard blocks in ehis screen. By rule, tables and forms cannot be on the same screen. With Global Sorting for Dashboard Sections, a more precise definition of the layout of the dashboard should be possible.
   
   We would like to ask the JourFixe to make it possible to define the sorting  in the same way as the presentation in a separate subtab for all dashboard sections.

   current implementation

   

   

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We follow the suggestion to place the definition of sorting on a dedicated sub-tab. Accepted for 9/trunk.

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

Status news: 

• In the meantime, a lot of feedback has been received on the use of various button classes and the AdvancedSelectionListGUI.
  Maintainers who have not yet provided feedback on their efforts are asked to provide feedback as soon as possible.
  The next session will discuss, among other things, the replacement of submit buttons and link buttons.
• At the last meeting we received a detailed and impressive status report on the new Data Table by Haagen, Nils [nlz]. A discussion at the JourFixe will follow in appropriate time.
• From the list of deprecations for ILIAS 10, the ilConfirmationGUI is already being tackled for replacement in the moment.

Next Bi-Weekly-Meeting: Monday, 13 MAR 2023, 14:30 - 16:00

5.5 Suggested Features for 9

1. Abandon ECTS Grades in ILIAS Test: We highly appreciate this suggestion and abandon ECTS support in T&A with ILIAS 9. Please check if there are related test cases and remove them in case.

2. Declaration of Data Protection: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9 - but would like to keep the option for a mandatory ToS and the related mechanism to delete account in case of withdrawl of the ToS acceptance. Please clarify the FR accordingly. In general, we highly appreciate to get a common code base for all legal documents, incl. accessiblity information and the legal notice.

3. compact access to the »Legal Regulations« for users: We prefer not to have a separate modal where all existing legal documents are displayed as links and opened as suggested by this FR. We prefer to improve the presentation of the footer of ILIAS and to allow to stack links horizontally as known from other websites (e.g. www.ilias.de). This will allow to call one the available documents straight from the footer, incl. the legal notice (which has to be available with one click). A workshop for a 'Footer Improvement' is organised by Fabian Schmid.

4. New administration node ‘Legal Regulations‘: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. The product manager will contact our icon designer to create related icons for the new administration sub-nodes.

5. UI-Refactoring Previews: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. Please add an ALT text to the preview images to support A11y. Title of text could be: "Preview {nr.} of {title of file object}".

6. KS-ViewControls for Dashboard Sections: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

7. Global Sorting for Dashboard Sections We highly appreciate the suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. Beside this FR, we would like to have a better solution for the dashboard. Fabian's suggestion could be one solution. A related FR would be highly appreciated.

   • Feature request presented by Samoila, Oliver [oliver.samoila]
   • Requested time slot 15'

8. [[]]

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9. [[]]

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10. [[]]

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11. [[]]

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12. [[]]

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13. [[]]

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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.