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No. We do not want this initiative to hinder the current development process. Upcoming releases of DSpace software will continue to include new features and resolve bugs/issues. Chances are much of the code changes coming out of this initiative integration effort will be rolled out over several releases (some may even be behind-the-scenes changes that you won't even notice).
Think of this initiative as a separately organized effortproject, whose end goal is better collaboration between the DSpace & Fedora communities and better integration between the software. DSpace software itself will continue to improve and change as this effort goes along. We fully expect there to be several releases of DSpace software before we are able to release a DSpace with "Fedora Inside".
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At this time, we don't know the complete answer.
To be clear, we fully expect there to be several releases of DSpace software before we are able to release a DSpace with "Fedora Inside". Most upcoming releases should have normal upgrade processes (similar to upgrading from 1.5 to 1.6). The only upgrade that may contain extra steps is when DSpace is first released with "Fedora Inside". Our intention is the make this upgrade as easy as possible and find common solutions that everyone in the community can utilize.
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At this time, we don't know the complete answer.
To be clear, we fully expect there to be several releases of DSpace software before we are able to release a DSpace with "Fedora Inside". You will not need to install Fedora until DSpace actually is initially released with "Fedora Inside".
In the early stagesfirst few "Fedora Inside" releases, you may need to perform some basic steps to install or upgrade Fedora whenever you install or upgrade DSpace. However, the Fedora component should never be more difficult to manage than the existing relational database (PostgreSQL) component.
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Will my current DSpace User Interface / Add-On customizations still work?
In the near term, all your customizations should continue to work (or require minor updates, just as they may have when you upgrade from 1.5 to 1.6). Again, we fully expect there to be several releases of DSpace software before we are able to release a DSpace with "Fedora Inside".
We currently don't know which customizations will continue to work once DSpace is packaged with "Fedora Inside". We hope that basic user interface customizations (CSS / Javascript / etc) will work immediately. However, any customizations to the internal API or complex add-ons will likely need to be rebuilt or refactored. As we move closer towards figuring out the internal API changes required for this integration, we will be able to better answer this question. We also plan to report which APIs will change, so that you can more easily determine whether your add-ons will require updates.
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