Koha Community Newsletter: January 2018

Koha Community Newsletter
January 2018

Volume 9, Issue 1
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Chad Roseburg, Koha Community Newsletter Editor

Please submit news items to Submit

Development
Community
- How To
- Support Provider News
Upcoming Events
Past Events

Development

Koha 17.11.02 Released

by Nick Clemens
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of 17.11.02.
This is a maintenance release and contains many bugfixes and enhancements.

This is my second release as the 17.11.x release maintainer.
Thank you very much to everyone who helped along the way, looking forward to many more 🙂

Full release notes

Koha 17.05.05 Released

by Fridolin Somers
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of 17.05.08.

Koha 17.05.08 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 4 enhancements, 30 bugfixes.

Have a look at release post :

Koha 17.05.08 release

Koha 16.11.15 Released

by Chris Cormack
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 16.11.15.

Koha 16.11.15 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 7 security fixes, 3 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at

Koha 16.11.15 released

KohaDevBox Updates: Try Elasticsearch Now!

by Tomas Cohen Arazi
KohaDevbox recently received attention and got some nice improvements. Remember you can propose your improvements in the project’s Github page (link https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox) and we accept pull requests 😉

Remote debugging capabilities

For those familiar to Perl development, having the ability to use a remote debugger is key for productivity when debugging non-trivial problems.

Koha itself got patched so the ‘koha-plack’ command accepts remote debugger configuration parameters [1]. KohaDevBox now makes use of this addition and includes two helpful aliases:

start_plack_debug: will start a remote debugging session.
prove_debug: will run the prove command (for running tests) with all the remote debugging configuration.

Both commands require that you tweak your ‘vars/user.yml’ file:

  remote_debugger: true
  ...
  remote_debugger_location: "localhost:9000"

  remote_debugger_key: "''"

If you are using VDebug inside KohaDevBox, the setting ‘remote_debugger’ to ‘true’ should be enough to have things done. If you are doing it in your host machine (I use Komodo IDE in the host operating system) you need to use:

  remote_debugger_location: "192.168.50.1:9000"

For instructions, look at KohaDevBox’s README.md (link https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox#running-the-remote-debugger-with-plack)

Instructions for running prove using the remote debugger can be found here (link https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox#run-tests).

[1] https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=18964

Selenium integration

Progress has been made for using Selenium on the test suite, to automate functional testing (Joubu++).

In order to use Selenium inside KohaDevBox, new configuration entries have been added:

  selenium: false
  selenuium_url: ...

Set ‘selenium’ to ‘true’ to get the provisioning script install all that’s needed. ‘selenium_url’ is there just in case you want to test different Selenium versions.

Once you have selenium provisioned, you can start it using a convenient alias we now have:

  start_selenium

I recomment running Selenium on a separate terminal because it is not backgrounded by default. You can use ‘byobu’ (which is shipped in KohaDevBox) or ‘tmux’ to get multiple tabs in a terminal.

There’s a lot of work from Alex Buckely (thanks!) to have broader test coverage with Seleium (find it in Bugzilla!). Now that it is really easy to get Selenium running in KohaDevbox, do not hesitate and go test Alex’s patches!

OPAC development easier

As you might know, the OPAC style is handled using LESS. KohaDevBox ships with less from the beggining, but now we introduced a new alias for recreating the ‘opac.css’ file from the ‘opac.less’ file:

  $ less-opac

KohaDevBox requirements updates

The required Ansible version has been shifted to 2.0+. This update to the README.md file has been missing for a while. I recommend the use of the official Ansible (stable) PPA if you are using a Debian-based host operating system, and homebrew on macOS to have Ansible always up to date.

Ubuntu/Debian

  $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
  $ sudo apt update
  $ sudo apt install ansible

macOS

  $ brew update
  $ brew install ansible

New Te Reo translation in Koha 17.11

by Bonnie Crawford
The Catalyst Koha team are very excited to announce that in late 2017, we sponsored the update the Te Reo Māori translation for Koha in Koha 17.11 by a registered translator.
You can see the translation in action at: https://demo.mykoha.co.nz/ and it can be downloaded for use at http://translate.koha-community.org/mi/17.11/.
Note that bibliographic records will appear in the language that they were catalogued.

Feel free to contact the Catalyst team if you have any queries on this.

Ngā manaakitanga,

Bonnie Crawford
Koha Team Coordinator
Catalyst

Community

How To

Vimal Kumar shows you how to how to send Koha usage statistics to Hea.

Jessie Zairo created the following tutorials for you:

Discover the following topics with Kelly McElligott:

Support Provider News

Barton Chittenden has some tips for making your screen-shots stand out when submitting tickets to ByWater.
ByWater Solutions at ALA Midwinter 2018
ByWater Solutions at Louisiana Library Association 2018
ByWater Solutions at Ontario Library Association (OLA) Super Conference 2018

Upcoming Events

NZ Koha User Group Day – 22 March

by Kathryn Tyree
Kia ora! Ngā mihi o te tau hau!
Hello! Happy New Year!

* * * * *

We invite you to save the date for the New Zealand Koha User Group Day
2018

Thursday 22 March, 10am – 4pm
Kindly hosted by Whanganui District Libraries

All libraries currently using Koha, Koha enthusiasts, and the Koha-
curious are welcomed!

Please contact Sonny Tamihana to propose any topics, or to volunteer to
present: sonny@whanganuilibrary.com

We will be back in touch soon with more information.

We look forward to seeing those of you who can come!

Best wishes,
Whanganui Libraries and the Catalyst Koha team.

* * * * *

From Koha email list

Hackfest in Marseille

When:: 12-16 March 2018
Where:: At BibLibre , 108 Rue Breteuil, 13006 Marseille
Who:: developers, administrators, librarians, Koha users …
Prerequisites:: know Koha, at least know some modules
Participation:: free, but a minimum of 2 to 3 days of participation is recommended, especially for beginners
Food:: lunch is provided on site (financial participation to be defined, between 15 and 20 € per meal). There is always coffee, tea, and everyone can bring delicacies to enjoy or to discover. Free meals in the evening but one or more appointment points are always available
Other:: English is a ++ to interact with everyone and participate in mini-conferences but not required
Hashtag:: #hfk18 to communicate on social networks
Registration:: open with BibLibre, by sending an email to Paul Poulain
Contact infos:: associationkohala@gmail.com

2018 Central Texas Koha Summit

Central Texas Koha Summit Event Date:: May 23, 2018
Event Time:: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Event Location:: Round Rock Public Library
Event Address:: 216 E Main St, Round Rock, TX 78664
Registration:: Please fill out the form here

Central Texas Koha Summit

The 2018 Summit will take place at the Round Rock Public Library in Round Rock, Texas on Wednesday May 23, 2018. Interested in learning more about Koha and what it can do for your library? Then join ByWater Solutions, Round Rock Public Library and other Koha Community Members for a conversation about Koha and how it can benefit your library. The 2018 Central Texas Koha Summit will take place at the Round Rock Public Library 216 E Main St, Round Rock, TX 78664 9:00am – 4:00pm.

Topics will include advantages of Koha, customer and staff functionality, technical attributes, collection development and lending services. We will also discuss the Koha community and how collaborative developments work.