2019-02-28 DSpace 7 Working Group Meeting

Date

28 Feb 2019 from 15:00-16:00 UTC

Location: https://duraspace.zoom.us/my/dspace (Meeting ID: 502 527 3040).

• More connection options available at DSpace Meeting Room

Agenda

• (15 mins) Developer Stand Up - Developers give brief updates on their effort (or their team's effort).

  • Update/see "Current Work" section below based on your status. Please feel free to update prior to meeting.
  • Please highlight any new work (needing reviews/testing), any blockers (for you), and any discussion topics you may have.
• (30 mins) General Discussion Topics
  
  1. Deletion of EPersons in DSpace (required for GDPR compliance) - Pascal-Nicolas Becker
     1. https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2229. NOTE: item.getSubmitter() will return null if EPerson deleted.  
     2. Some have expressed past concerns about setting EPerson to null, and have favored a "ghost user" approach. For full discussion background see this DS-4036 ticket comment.
     3. How can we move this forward for DSpace 7? We need to decide on a final approach.
  2. (tentative?) Concurrency in DSpace 7 (or 8).  What do we want to do when multiple editors are editing the same object?
     1. REST Contract notes on ETags: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract#etags--conditional-headers
     2. REST PATCH method also defines a "test" operation: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902#section-4.6 , however we do not yet support it in the REST API
  3. (add a discussion topic)
• (15 mins) Planning for next week
  
  • Assigning PRs for Review
  • Next tasks from Development Planning Spreadsheet

Attendees

• Art Lowel (Atmire)

• Andrea Bollini (4Science)

• Tim Donohue

• Heather Greer Klein

• Lieven Droogmans

• Mark H. Wood
• Giuseppe Digilio (4Science)
• Ben Bosman
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker
• Chris Wilper
• Terrence W Brady
• Pablo Prieto
• Paulo Graça

Current Work

Tickets / PRs In Progress

1. (Angular) Context sensitive admin menus (Art Lowel (Atmire) ) (work in progress)  (Timeline: Should be ready by March 7)
2. (Angular) Adding Accessibility via Travis CI  https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/356 (work in progress) (Lower priority)
3. (Angular) MyDSpace UI (work in progress) (Timeline: Should be ready by Feb 28, delayed  5th March need to run against the updated MyDSpace REST API PR)
4. (REST Contract) Edit Homepage news: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/45 (Additional input has been included, requires new review from Tim Donohue  & Andrea Bollini (4Science) ) (Lower priority)
5. (REST) MyDSpace Endpoint (Andrea Bollini (4Science) - EARLY Reviews Needed. Reviewers: Ben Bosman , Tim Donohue  (IT missings - previous Discover IT fixed ) on the 4Science repo against the 2312 PR https://github.com/4Science/DSpace/pull/65 (Timeline: Should be ready by Feb 28, delayed, ITs ready by the end of week 3rd March)
6. (REST) Updating Owning Collections: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2283 (Kevin Van de Velde (Atmire)  - changes requested. Implementation doesn't align with contract) (Timeline: Should be ready a week after the entities are merged)
7. (REST) Item Mapper functionality: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2282  (Kevin Van de Velde (Atmire)  - changes requested. Implementation doesn't align with contract) (Timeline: Should be ready a week after the entities are merged)
8. (Backend) One Webapp Backend - Initial PR: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2265 (Tim Donohue ) (work in progress)

PRs Needing Review

1.  (REST Contract) Group and eperson management: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/41 (UPDATED PR - Re-reviews needed from Andrea Bollini (4Science) ,   Tim Donohue)
2.  (REST Contract) Endpoint for EPerson profile PATCH requests: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/49 (UPDATED PR - Andrea Bollini (4Science) approved, Paulo Graça  - approved)
3. (REST Contract) Fix examples for metadata-as-map https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/53 (Paulo Graça, Tim Donohue)
4.  (REST Contract) Metadata PATCH support: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/46 ( Tim Donohue - approved , Paulo Graça -approved and Andrea Bollini (4Science) )
5. (REST) Metadata PATCH support: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2313 (Paulo Graça , Tim Donohue - implementation ready for review, pending final approval of contract PR above)
6.  (REST) Workflow Endpoint: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2312 (Tim Donohue , Ben Bosman Re-reviewed and additional feedback added.) 
7. (Angular) Submission implementation: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/279  (Art Lowel (Atmire) , Paulo Graça - reviewing, Tim Donohue  all received suggestion applied, ready to be merged after approval)
8. (Angular) Administrative Item Edit: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/362 (Paulo Graça - minor changes requested,  Tim Donohue)
9.  (Angular) Browse by date and Starts-With component: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/364 (Paulo Graça - approved, Tim Donohue - minor changes requested)
10. (Backend) Upgrading Solr Server for DSpace - Initial PR: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2058 (Terrence W Brady , Kim Shepherd , Art Lowel (Atmire))
    1. Might have an impact on MyDSpace PR (See "In Progress" section)?
       
       

PRs Merged this week!

1.  (REST) Metadata as a Map: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2287
2. (Angular) Metadata as a Map: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/347
3.  (Angular) Modifying Metadata Registries: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/355

BLOCKED

1. (REST) EPerson profile PATCH functionality : https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2257
   1. Blocked by Contract #49
2. (Angular) Move Item Component: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/335
   1. Blocked by DSpace PR#2283
3. (Angular) Item-Collection Mapper:  https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/348
   
   1. Blocked by DSpace PR#2282

Delayed / Needs Discussion

1. (REST) Scripts & Processes endpoint: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/17
2. Discussion of deletion of EPeople for GDPR compliance (from Pascal)
   1. https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2229. NOTE: item.getSubmitter() will return null if EPerson deleted.

Priorities for Preview Release

As discussed in previous DSpace 7 meetings, our DSpace 7 Preview release is aimed for end of March, followed by a Beta in May (before OR2019).  The top priorities for the Preview Release are (in this order):

1. Submission & Workflow UI / backend
2. Configurable Entities (from DSpace 7 Entities Working Group (2018-19))
3. Upgrading Solr Server for DSpace (not required for Preview, as there's no user facing features. However, the earlier we feel comfortable merging this effort the better)

Notes

• Discussion topics
  • Discussion of deletion of EPeople for GDPR compliance (from Pascal): https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2229. NOTE: item.getSubmitter() will return null if EPerson deleted.
    • Consensus that there's only two viable approaches... Either we delete the EPerson entirely (see Pascal's PR), or we use a "ghost user" approach (a special user account which is linked to Items where submitter/Eperson was deleted)
    • Lieven notes concerns about not catching all the possible NullPointerExpections if we delete EPerson entirely. We have some tests, but we aren't sure we have all scenarios tested.
    • Pascal notes that it would be a community/team effort to find & fix any that are not already fixed
    • Tim notes our new test driven development processes should help us to find these issues more quickly.  Community Testathon can clean up the rest.
    • Andrea notes if we go with delete Eperson approach, we should add integration tests to REST API and Angular to check for possible problems (especially around null submitter)
      • Tim volunteers to help with Integration Tests on REST API
      • We'd likely need more help on Angular side integration tests
    • Tim is concerned with "ghost user" approach, as it'd be a specialized EPerson account that would need to be treated differently than all other EPersons.  Unclear how much effort that would be, and whether that causes additional complications.
    • Not a clear consensus on whether we want to delete EPerson or use "ghost user" – different individuals favor different approaches.  However, there's no strong objections to either approach from anyone – just personal concerns expressed.
    • FINAL DECISION: Since we have a PR#2229 and no one has strong objections, let's move it forward as-is.  Let's work together to create the missing integration tests (Tim will help) and add comments noting any missing use cases / scenarios where a Null EPerson could be a problem. That way we can build out integration tests.
  • Skipped discussion of Concurrency in DSpace 7. Will pick that up next week
  • Discussion of Edit Homepage News: https://github.com/DSpace/Rest7Contract/pull/45
    • Tim wanted more details on the proposed approach to use Bitstreams to store the Homepage news
    • Andrea said this could be metadata, like Community/Collection news
    • Tim agrees. We should consider using the Site object to store metadata for homepage news / logos, in the same way that these are stored on individual Community & Collection objects.
    • Lieven & Ben note they will consider this internally & bring ideas back for discussion next week