JourFixe-2023-09-18

Date and place

Monday, 18 September 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 Developing for PHP 8.2

The Technical Board kindly asks all developers to update their development environments to PHP 8.2.

• ILIAS 9 will (need to) support PHP 8.2. Right now it is impossible to run the current trunk on PHP 8.2 without a stash of fixes.
• We would like to switch the main installation of https://test9.ilias.de to PHP 8.2 as quickly as possible, this is the only way to start removing trivial issues before we actually start the main beta-testing-phase. This will reduce frustration greatly and speed up the process of testing signifcantly.
• Thank you very much for your collaboration!

2.2 Projectmanagement Quality Review

The Technical Board is looking for a person that would like to take over the project management to improve the quality of our software for the next 6 month – as volunteer or with time from their organisation.

More information is available in the job offer in our forum Jobs and Community.

2.3 UI Clinic

Our UI/UX/A11y experts Yvonne Seiler, Kristina Auerswald and Kendra Grotz 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!

2.4 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 9 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.

2.5 Maintainerships

2.5.1 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.

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

2.5.2 New or Changed Maintainerships

• …

3 Maintained Versions

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

3.1 Roadmap

Lifecycles of maintained versions

• ILIAS 7 : end of maintenance of ILIAS 7 is expected for April 2024 when we hopefully have a stable ILIAS 9 release. Otherwise, the maintenance of 7 is extended accordingly.
• ILIAS 8 : end of full maintenance at 31 DEC 2024, security bug fixes (only) until 31 DEC 2025.

3.2 Mantis Reports

The following Mantis reports have been tagged with 'Needs Jour Fixe Decision' and were therfore be discussed in detail:

1. #7181: .xml of user export has wrong data (import will not work): Stephan will check the effects if we accept the change (remove 'Action)') suggested by goyu. In any case, the change will only be made for trunk/ILIAS 9.
2. #33553: RBAC allows 'light-admins' to 'shoot themselve in the foot': We prefer not to introduce an additional check to prevent that users can change permissions of role to which they belong themselves. But it would be fine to get rid of this error message (see screenshot) if not sufficient permissions are given.
3. #34306: Useability: To many clicks to get to LM-Settings or Chapters: We already have a solution to improve the usability of the Learning Module editing for ILIAS 9, see https://docu.ilias.de/goto_docu_wiki_wpage_7518_1357.html. The maintainer suggests to backport this solution that comes with ILIAS 9 to ILIAS 8. This avoids a specific solution for 8 that would be removed again for 9.
4. #34620: Learning Sequence title not shown anymore in kiosk mode: We prefer the solution where the title of the LSO is presented in the slate (instead of "Curriculum") and in the Mode Info (incl. the object type - here 'Learning Sequence). Usability fix is accepted for 7, 8 (and trunk).
5. #36631: Download Multiple Objects on LSO leads to error: We had a longer discussion how to proceed with this issue. We see that the feature "Download Multiple Objects" should not be a property of the container service (to which it currently belongs) as it handles only file objects and folders with files. To solve this issue quickly, Richard will implement a standard error message that is shown when this function is called in a LSO. We do not want to introduce an exception to the ilObjectListGUI to hide this function in the LSO. In a second step we suggest to have a workshop to find a reasonable and sound solution for a future home of this feature.
6. #36938: Datacollection: unique property of a formula field - once set - cannot be changed: We follow the suggestion of the DC coordinator and request a bugfix for trunk, only. ILIAS 7 and 8 stay as they are.
7. #37797: Bilder aus Zwischenablage einfügen funktioniert nicht mehr: We do not want to support copy and paste without having ILIAS involved in the file upload for security reasons. Therefore, pasting images from the clipboard should not be supported. Current behaviour in 7.24 is the expected one.
8. #37921: Content automation must create course links with LP setting "Adopt from Training": We accept the suggested migration to change the LP settings of the course links within a study programme. Please check the impact of this setting to newly created course links that are assigned to a SP manually.

Postponed to next Jour Fixe:

• none

3.3 Mantis Statistic

3.3.1 General Statistic

Current information from Mantis:

• 768 Issues in ILIAS 7 (open and fix.acc.prio.)
• 494 Issues in ILIAS 8 (open and fix.acc.prio.)
• 106 Issues with corresponding TestCases in TestRail from Release 7 and 8. (Search term "Failed test") (Also Feedback = 7 | Postponed = 10 | Funding needed = 9)

→ What does this mean for ILIAS 7 and 8? There is a legitimate expectation that this number of issues will have a negative effect on user acceptance.

→ What does this mean for ILIAS 9 and the beta phase? With 4700 test cases, it can already be assumed that the 98% for a stable cannot be achieved. Even if no new errors were to occur, which is also unrealistic.

This also shows that the following statistics alone do not provide a comprehensive enough overview.

3.3.2 Statistic per Developer

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.

Killing, Alexander [alex] notes that the number of fixed voted bugs as indicated in this table is not correct. The script used to generate the data for the Mantis statistic seems to be faulty. The PM will check what is wrong with the script and to tries to get a fix.

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.

• none

3.5 Open Pull Requests to Discuss

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

1. PR6151 • Allow Different Sources for Images Depending on Actual Size on Screen: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for trunk.
2. PR6282 • 9/object/feature move actions to ks: We accept the suggested PR for trunk even it might come with performance problems in huge object lists. Please check if we can have a accessible version of the assynchronuous loading of actions in the KS Dropdown (as this might be the best way to prevent  a weaker performance.
3. PR6288 • ks: main action for items : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for trunk. Please allow also Standard Links as action. Alexander will try to consider all comments made by Ferdinand and confirmed that he will add tests and a testcase as required by Timon. 
4. PR6305 • #37842: Fix OIDC Logout and remove implicit workflow: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for all maintained versions. Please add a notice to the changed behaviour section of the release notes and send a related notification in the admin mailing list as well as in Discord.
5. PR6324 • Improvement/9/new filedelivery service: All maintainer are asked to have a look at this PR. It will be discussed at the next JF.

Postponed to next JF:

1. PR6324 • Improvement/9/new filedelivery service
2. PR • :

3.6 Continuous Integration

• Michael Jansen gave a short overview on CI.
• Unit Tests:
  • As of today, there are (executed with PHP 8.2)
    • 9369 (-94)
    • 23127 assertions (depends on the order of tests being executed / not stably determinable)
    • 13 skipped unit tests
      • 1 x \TagInputTest::testUserCreatedNotAllowed
      • 1 x tests/ResourceStorage/Consumer/AccessTokenTest.php
      • 1 x Services/Style/System/test/Style/ilSkinFactoryTest.php
    • 1 incomplete unit test
      • \ilSessionTest::testPasswordAssisstanceSession
  • There are hundreds (=203) of deprecation warnings when executing the unit test suite with PHP 8.2!
    • tests/GlobalScreen/Notification/*
    • tests/GlobalCache/*
    • tests/Language/*
    • Services/Database/*
    • Services/Language/*
    • Services/MainMenu/*
    • Services/Style/System/*
    • libs/composer/vendor/guzzlehttp/psr7/*

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:
   • Ghostscript:
     • Supported/Recommended: 9.51
   • MathJax (optional): Supported 2.7 and >=3.2, Recommended: 2.7
   • ImageMagick
     • Support/Recommended: 6.9.x / 6.9.11-60 Q16

4.3 Deprecated for ILIAS 9

The following services, methods and UI elements are deprecated for ILIAS 9:

• Parts of UIComponent Service
  • Advanced Selection List
  • Buttons (except ilButtonBase as it is needed for the SplitButton to be removed with ILIAS 10)
  • Character Selector
• …

4.4 Important Changes

• No new changes to announce

4.5 Development Issues

1. Improvement of deleting competences (Famula, Thomas [tfamula]): The article says "the entries in the Learning History [will] remain (according to the concept of Learning History)". The thing is, that there is not such a concept. The entries are based on competence-specific database entries and not separately stored. The same goes for Learning History entries coming from other components. Because of this initially wrong assumption, we would like to reject this exception in the article. This would mean that the entries in the Learing History will be deleted like all the other listed competence-related data, too.

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe] : Thanks for clarifying that entries in the Learning History are deleted when related competencies are deleted.

2. none

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe] :

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

•  Status ILIAS 9 
  • Legacy Advanced Selection List: 18 of 261 usages left
  • Legacy Button: 69 of 634 usages left
  • Special Character Selector has been removed from trunk.
•  Status ILIAS 10
  • Work in progress. (e.g. UI Data Table and Ordering Table, Confirmation Modal, DateTime-Picker)
  • No new milestones achieved.

• Next appointments:
  • Bi-Weekly-Meeting : Monday, 25 September 2023, 14:30 - 16:00

4.7 Suggested Features for 9

1. Abandon PDFService : We highly appreciate this suggestion and abandon the PDF service with ILIAS 9.

2. Separate Training Acknowledgement From General Update Function : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept it for ILIAS 9.

3. Set grade for multiple assignments : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept it for ILIAS 9.

4. Validating Import : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. We see it as a first step towards a better import and export of objects. Next step should be a general discussion how to improve the export/import process.

5. Removing Legacy-UI » Toolbar » ‘Label‘ + ‘Legacy Dropdown‘ + ‘Label‘ + ‘Legacy Dropdown‘ + ‘Submit‘: We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

6. IRSS: Migrate Exercise to IRSS and IRSS: Migrate Exercise to IRSS (Instruction Files) : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9.

7. Improve Posting View Navigation : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 9. Please discuss the concept of "Top to Page" in the UI Clinic to get a general concept for this pattern in ILIAS. And please move "Edit Posting" and "Edit Blog" to a separate dropdown within the toolbar. In case the Kitchen Sink provides an appropriate navigation element, please use this for the implementation. Will be discussed in the next LUI meeting. Concerning long posting titles we prefer to cut titles after a defined width by the UI Drowdown component.

   Postponed to Next Jour Fixe

8. Presenting Validation Failure

   • Suggested feature presented by Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]
   • Requested timeslot: 30'

9. Study Programme: Page Editor Element for Required Actions

   • Suggested feature presented by Klees, Richard [rklees]
   • Requested timeslot: 15'

10. Study Programme: New Action ’Update Certificate’ for Members Tab

    • Suggested feature presented by Klees, Richard [rklees]
    • Requested timeslot: 15'

11. Study Programme: New Action ’Remove Certificate’ for Members Tab

    • Suggested feature presented by Klees, Richard [rklees]
    • Requested timeslot: 15'

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 Deprecated for ILIAS 10

The following services, methods and UI elements are deprecated for ILIAS 10:

• Services/Table
• Services/UIComponent
  • Checkbox List Overlay
  • Confirmation & Confirmation Table
  • Explorer & Explorer2
  • Glyph
  • Grouped List
  • Lightbox (Has been removed from trunk while ILIAS 9 has being developed.)
  • Modal
  • Nested List
  • Overlay
  • Panel
  • Progress Bar
  • Split Button
  • Syntax Highlighter
  • Tabs
  • Text Highlighter
  • Toolbar
  • Tooltip

5.3 Important Changes

1. …

5.4 Suggested Features for 10

There was not enough time today to discuss ILIAS 10 features.

Postponed to Next Jour Fixe

1. Additional fields for OpenID Connect (OIDC) SSO:

   • Suggested feature presented by Jansen, Michael [mjansen]
   • Requested timeslot: 15'