What’s on in koha-devel #14
New format, lots of reminders!
This is the first version of the what’s on in koha-devel emails I used to send to the Koha mailing lists that is posted to the website. We hope that this will help to reach more people.
The last one has been sent 2 months ago, there are a lot of things to tell or repeat.
Table of contents
Around Koha
Hea
If it is not done yet you should tell us more about you and your library!
By configuring the Usage statistics module, you can share with the Koha community some information about your library and even make it show up on a map. If you are using versions 3.22.21, 16.05.13, 16.11.08, 17.05.00 or later, you can easily do it! You can tune and choose the information to share with the community on a new administration page. You can find it under Administration › Usage statistics. I really hope to see a whole map full of libraries in the next weeks 🙂
See the global map to see all libraries and an example with the details of a Koha installation with several libraries.
Get involved
A new tool, the kanban
To coordinate and assign tasks we are using a new tool for the 17.11 release cycle. You can find it at https://tree.taiga.io/project/joubu-koha-rm-1711/kanban
There is a wiki page to explain a bit how it works.
It will be a very important tool for the next release, so if you are involved directly or indirectly in the Koha community (translation, documentation, write or test patches, etc.) you should join us if you didn’t yet.
If you are not already on it and are willing to help us, send me an email and I will send you an invitation.
Contribute to the Koha manual
Starting with 17.05 we have switched the tool used to generate the manuals to Sphinx. The 17.05 manual has been added to the website and includes 2 new chapters about the web installer and the onboarding tool written by Alex Buckley.
Sphinx uses reStructuredText for formatting which makes it a lot easier to read and edit the manual source code. Contributing has been made a lot easier and using gitlab it’s possible to contribute to the manual using only your browser. Instructions and a YouTube video by Lee Jamison can be found on the wiki.
We have started updating the manual by adding the new system preferences, but a lot more work needs to be done to catch up with all the new features and changes in Koha. Some ways you can help:
- Add to our to-do list: https://annuel2.framapad.org/p/KohaManualTodo
- Provide proof reading for recent changes before publishing on KDP or any other platform
- Test the new gitlab based workflow, it can be as simple as a typo fix
- Volunteer to write documentation about features or even update a certain chapter.
If you want to help, but don’t know where to get started, please get in touch with the Documentation Team!
Follow what is waiting for attention on bugzilla
If you want to follow what is waiting for help on bugzilla, there is a webservice you can integrate with your own dashboard, if you have one.
It will display the different major, critical and blocker bugs. For more information, see the announcement on the list.
Big red warning button and carrots
Two emails have been sent to the koha-devel list.
The first one “Where is the BIG RED WARNING button?” is a call for assistance from the release manager. The goal was to discuss how important bugs can be processed quickly to avoid integration lags and for them to make it in quickly. This email is still waiting for answers and discussions.
As written in it, without an agreement we will find all together, no new enhancements are going to be pushed.
The second one, “Carrots or sticks” is a call to ask you what would motivate you to contribute more actively to the Koha community. Some ideas have been listed. What is missing to see YOU (more) involved?
Technical topics
Important – Update your MySQL|MariaDB configuration
If you are administrating Koha instances you must take a look at this wiki page to know what must be added to the my.cnf file in order to prevent data loss.
Continuous integration improvement
Our continuous integration server (aka jenkins) has been updated to run all the tests of our test suite (this is the first time ever!).
Take a look at the announcement on the list to know what has been done.
Elasticsearch test server
A request to get an elasticsearch test server has been made. You can follow the links to get information on the progress.
Special thanks
Special thanks to Lee Jamison who has been working hard to fix and sign-off bugs during the last two months.
He is also the first to have completed the Koha how-to which guide people though the write and sign-off processes of a patch.