Halfway to 3.6.0 (and a brief explanation of the release process)

We are just about to hit the halfway mark, (tomorrow NZ time) for the release of the 3.6.0 feature release. 3.4.3 is due out in a few days. I just had a thought, that perhaps there are some people who aren’t sure how releases for Koha work. So ill do a brief summary.

We work on a time based release cycle. All code is developed in the open, from multiple developers all around the world. This code is separated into adding new features, and fixing bugs. New features are released ever six months, these are the x.x.0 releases, (3.2.0, 3.4.0, 3.6.0 etc). But every month we release a bugfix release also, these are the 3.4.1, 3.4.2 etc releases.

So 3.4.0 was release April 22, 3.6.0 will be release October 22. 3.4.3 will be released July 22. So the 22nd of each month is an important date in the Koha world.

So how does code get into Koha? Well it’s pretty simple, and all contributors follow the same rules which makes it easy. Here’s a quick run down.

  1. A bug/enhancement is submitted by the ‘bug reporter’.
  2. A patch is submitted by the ‘patch writer’.
  3. (optional) RM pushed it as a QA branch.
  4. The patch is tested and signed off by the ‘patch signer’.
  5. The patch is tested by the QA manager, patch status is set to Passed QA
  6. The patch is tested and signed off by RM
  7. If the patch passes, it is pushed into master by the RM, status is set to Patch Pushed.
  8. The bug is marked resolved by the ‘bug closer’.
  9. The bug is closed when a release is made containing that patch.

Pretty simple eh, the main difference between this and closed source projects, is this is all done in the open, at any time anyone can see the code and the status of a feature/bug. Recently we have introduced Global Bug Squashing days, which are working really well at keeping the queues moving along. I track the bugs/features I have pushed up into the repository here http://koha-releasemanagement.branchable.com/ (as an aside, branchable.com is awesome, check it out).

Now as anyone who reads my blog knows, I enjoy useless statistics. So here’s the statistics at the halfway(ish) mark.

  • Processed 703 csets from 64 developers  (64 different people in 3 months, how cool is that?!!)
  • 23 new features added
  • 131 bugs fixed

Major new features close to addition, Total accounts system rewrite, allowing much better handling of partial payments, refunds etc. This is the first module to be shifted to the new Koha:: namespace from the old C4:: namespace.  Hourly (and in fact minutely) loans reworked in a more robust fashion. Holds system totally overhauled, to allow for even crazier schemes of placing holds, and much more.

Now is also a good time for people to start thinking about positions for the 3.8.0 release. Ever fancied being a release manager and trying to wrangle 70 odd people in 20 different countries into moving in mostly the same direction? Well this is the job for you (I say job, I mean labour of love :))

 

Speaking at SLIS meeting

So on the 28th of July (2 days after the NZ Koha users group meeting). I will be presenting at the Wellington SLIS group meeting.

SLIS provides a forum for networking and exchange of professional information for those with an interest in Special Libraries in the Wellington Region. We aim to hold up to 11 open meetings each year, and to facilitate professional development of members through special events as appropriate

I’m going to be speaking about the similarities between the consensus building approach to making decisions as seen in Marae based Hui, and participating in a  Free Software project. I think it should be pretty interesting, of course I’m biased 🙂

  • Date: Thursday 28th of July 2011
  • Time: 12.30-1.30pm
  • Venue: The Treasury, 1 The Terrace. When you arrive, take the elevator and report to Reception on Level 5
  • Cost: $5 for SLIS members, $8 for non-members

This session will be filmed and made available for non-Wellington based members.

People do need to RSVP, so if you want to do so, leave a comment and Ill get you the email address to RSVP to.

Bug squash day round up

Global sign off day #2 is now over in every single timezone, Magnus did a good write up on the koha-devel list. I just wanted to highlight the numbers.
The one I am most happy with is the does not apply, from 63 down to 38, that means a bunch of patches have been rebased and fixed to apply to current master, or been marked as fixed already. A lot of them went into the needs signoff queue and were signed off.

The 8 that passed qa, have now been pushed and are in master, and 3.4.x ready for people to use. And will be in 3.4.3 due out later this month.

All times are UTC.

State 2011-07-07
15:46
START		 2011-07-07
22:08		 2011-07-08
00:22		 2011-07-08
10:39		 2011-07-08
18:18		 2011-07-09
10:20
END
Does not apply 63 48 44 38 38 38
Failed QA 53 53 53 56 56 57
Needs Signoff 50 54 56 58 53 53
Passed QA 1 1 1 1 1 8
Pushed For QA 2 2 2 2 2 2
Signed Off 90 90 91 94 101 94

Second ever Koha Global Bug Squashing Day

Tomorrow, at least in NZ time, is the second of the month Bug Squashing days the Koha community have been running.

You can read all about it here on the Koha wiki. It’s not something just for developers, we simply need people who are willing to put in some time documenting/testing/signing off on patches. Koha is and always has been a collaborative project with input from as many people as possible and since it’s release in 2000 has never been the domain of one company, or one set of people. The software grows in the direction the users want it to, come along, add your 2 cents and contribute to a Free Software project. You will be making the world a better place.

 

Statistics for Koha 3.4.2 release

This time, I have removed the .po files from consideration, so translations are not counted

  • Processed 102 csets from 27 developers
  • 10 employers found
  • A total of 1677 lines added, 2507 removed (delta -830)
Developers with the most changesets
Owen Leonard 21 20.6%
Chris Cormack 13 12.7%
Fridolyn SOMERS 7 6.9%
Ian Walls 6 5.9%
Chris Nighswonger 5 4.9%
Frédérick Capovilla 5 4.9%
Katrin Fischer 5 4.9%
Janusz Kaczmarek 5 4.9%
Jared Camins-Esakov 4 3.9%
Frédéric Demians 4 3.9%
ruth@bywatersolutions.com 4 3.9%
Magnus Enger 2 2.0%
Robin Sheat 2 2.0%
Nicole C. Engard 2 2.0%
Colin Campbell 2 2.0%
Marcel de Rooy 2 2.0%
Galen Charlton 2 2.0%
Frère Sébastien Marie 2 2.0%
MJ Ray 1 1.0%
Jeremy Crabtree 1 1.0%
Dobrica Pavlinusic 1 1.0%
Srdjan Jankovi? 1 1.0%
Elliott Davis 1 1.0%
Ricardo Dias Marques 1 1.0%
Liz Rea 1 1.0%
Tomas Cohen Arazi 1 1.0%
Alex Arnaud 1 1.0%
Developers with the most changed lines
Ricardo Dias Marques 1871 57.7%
Chris Nighswonger 287 8.9%
Owen Leonard 269 8.3%
Chris Cormack 153 4.7%
Tomas Cohen Arazi 81 2.5%
Jared Camins-Esakov 74 2.3%
Fridolyn SOMERS 53 1.6%
MJ Ray 50 1.5%
Marcel de Rooy 49 1.5%
Galen Charlton 48 1.5%
Frédéric Demians 46 1.4%
Ian Walls 39 1.2%
Robin Sheat 31 1.0%
Colin Campbell 21 0.6%
Srdjan Jankovi? 21 0.6%
Frère Sébastien Marie 16 0.5%
Nicole C. Engard 13 0.4%
Frédérick Capovilla 12 0.4%
Janusz Kaczmarek 10 0.3%
Katrin Fischer 9 0.3%
Jeremy Crabtree 8 0.2%
Dobrica Pavlinusic 5 0.2%
ruth@bywatersolutions.com 4 0.1%
Alex Arnaud 4 0.1%
Magnus Enger 2 0.1%
Elliott Davis 1 0.0%
Liz Rea 1 0.0%
Developers with the most lines removed
Ricardo Dias Marques 1474 58.8%
Frédéric Demians 18 0.7%
Colin Campbell 5 0.2%
Frère Sébastien Marie 3 0.1%
Magnus Enger 1 0.0%
Developers with the most signoffs (total 267)
Chris Nighswonger 97 36.3%
Chris Cormack 89 33.3%
Nicole C. Engard 20 7.5%
Ian Walls 19 7.1%
Katrin Fischer 13 4.9%
Frédéric Demians 7 2.6%
Owen Leonard 6 2.2%
Magnus Enger 5 1.9%
Liz Rea 2 0.7%
Marcel de Rooy 2 0.7%
Colin Campbell 1 0.4%
Frère Sébastien Marie 1 0.4%
Joe Atzberger 1 0.4%
Jesse Weaver 1 0.4%
Paul Poulain 1 0.4%
Jared Camins-Esakov 1 0.4%
MJ Ray 1 0.4%
Top changeset contributors by employer
(Unknown) 32 31.4%
ACPL 21 20.6%
ByWater-Solutions 16 15.7%
Catalyst 15 14.7%
Foundations 5 4.9%
BSZ-BW 5 4.9%
Tamil 4 3.9%
PTFS-Europe 2 2.0%
BigBallOfWax 1 1.0%
Biblibre 1 1.0%
Top lines changed by employer
(Unknown) 2208 68.1%
ACPL 312 9.6%
Foundations 287 8.9%
Catalyst 190 5.9%
ByWater-Solutions 130 4.0%
Tamil 61 1.9%
PTFS-Europe 21 0.6%
BigBallOfWax 18 0.6%
BSZ-BW 9 0.3%
Biblibre 4 0.1%
Employers with the most signoffs (total 267)
Foundations 97 36.3%
Catalyst 84 31.5%
ByWater-Solutions 40 15.0%
(Unknown) 13 4.9%
BSZ-BW 13 4.9%
Tamil 7 2.6%
ACPL 6 2.2%
BigBallOfWax 5 1.9%
PTFS-Europe 1 0.4%
Biblibre 1 0.4%

 

ALA 2011 – From Wellington to Nawlins

So this year was my first ALA, which is one hell of an experience. I’m pretty sure there were more Librarians in the exhibition hall in one hour, than live in the whole of NZ.

I flew out to New Orleans via Santa Barbara, which was just as well given the mess the ash cloud made with my flights. Brendan and I arrived in New Orleans just after midnight on Friday morning. We spent the day, along with other ByWaterians working our way through bugs and enhancements, then the exhibition hall opened at 5pm.

It was really busy, as the picture above shows, we always had a lot of people to talk to. So much interest in Koha from libraries and consortia big and small. It was very refreshing that most people understood Free Software, and we didn’t have to spend time explaining that. Also refreshing was the lack of questions on things like scalability, Koha has well and truly proven itself in that regard and people there seemed well aware of it. Most questions were around support, what new features we had in the pipeline and the differences between Koha and the most prominent fork.

For the next 3 days I alternated with time on the stand and time meeting people and doing some hacking. I even managed to attend one session (Open Source ILS in Consortia) which was really good. It was a panel discussion, with 2 Evergreen and 3 Koha consortia represented. Ian and I even got a shout out which was neat.

Saturday morning was the LITA open source Interest group meeting. It was a small affair but very good. On Saturday night we had the Open Source ILS users get together which was great fun, lots of cool people to talk to. Afterwards we did a walk up and down Bourbon Street, which is certainly something to behold.

On Sunday night we ran a small hackfest, the highlight of which was spending time with the guys from IndexData and learning more about the internals of Zebra. Invaluable information was gathered.

Monday, I managed to catch up with Marshall Breeding for a good 1.5 hour chat. We covered a lot of topics, Kotui, Libwebcats, development processes and much more. It was a great chat and one I hope we get the chance to repeat. That evening we went for a cruise on the Mississippi on a paddle steamer, so much fun.

Tuesday morning back to Santa Barbara, for a lovely evening of barbeque elk and spare ribs grilled by Brendan, followed by a movie and a great night of sleep.

Wednesday, the long slow journey back to NZ began and by 12:30am Saturday morning I was back at home. I spent a lot of time in airports, on buses, trains and planes but it was worth it.

A huge thanks to ByWater Solutions for making it all possible for me to attend, and to my work (Catalyst) for letting me go.

Hello Jetlag, my old nemesis

Ahh, timezones, they don’t half mess with your bodyclock.

So I made it to the US, having spent 30 hours doing so, it took 2 more hours to clear customs and immigration, then 4 hours to wait for, and ride a bus up to Santa Barbara (so 36 all up).  So far the bus was the highlight of the trip, it went up highway 1, which goes right along the coast, really pretty.

After some good food and a good nights sleep in a comfy bed at a friends house, the world all looks a lot better today. We are off to New Orleans today, for ALA, which should be a lot of fun.

Make sure you come find me at ALA, ill either be hacking on stuff somewhere, or most likely hanging around the ByWater Solutions booth in the exhibit hall. I do have some NZ chocolate .. first in .. first served 🙂

Statistics for 3.2.10

  • Processed 23 csets from 19 developers
  • 9 employers found
  • A total of 505176 lines added, 467059 removed (delta 38117)
Developers with the most changesets
Chris Nighswonger 3 13.0%
Frédéric Demians 2 8.7%
Jared Camins-Esakov 2 8.7%
Chris Cormack 1 4.3%
Jeremy Crabtree 1 4.3%
Dobrica Pavlinusic 1 4.3%
Jonathan Druart 1 4.3%
Katrin Fischer 1 4.3%
Galen Charlton 1 4.3%
Salvador Zaragoza Rubio 1 4.3%
Frédérick Capovilla 1 4.3%
Marcel de Rooy 1 4.3%
Owen Leonard 1 4.3%
Fridolyn SOMERS 1 4.3%
Tomas Cohen Arazi 1 4.3%
ruth@bywatersolutions.com 1 4.3%
Alex Arnaud 1 4.3%
Colin Campbell 1 4.3%
conan (aka Fernando Canizo) 1 4.3%
Developers with the most changed lines
Frédéric Demians 501846 99.3%
Salvador Zaragoza Rubio 2671 0.5%
Jared Camins-Esakov 233 0.0%
Chris Nighswonger 220 0.0%
Tomas Cohen Arazi 81 0.0%
Galen Charlton 44 0.0%
Owen Leonard 39 0.0%
Marcel de Rooy 28 0.0%
Jeremy Crabtree 8 0.0%
Dobrica Pavlinusic 5 0.0%
Frédérick Capovilla 5 0.0%
Alex Arnaud 4 0.0%
Chris Cormack 3 0.0%
Jonathan Druart 2 0.0%
Fridolyn SOMERS 2 0.0%
Colin Campbell 2 0.0%
Katrin Fischer 1 0.0%
ruth@bywatersolutions.com 1 0.0%
conan (aka Fernando Canizo) 1 0.0%
Developers with the most lines removed
Owen Leonard 20 0.0%
Developers with the most signoffs (total 57)
Chris Nighswonger 20 35.1%
Chris Cormack 18 31.6%
Ian Walls 6 10.5%
Nicole C. Engard 3 5.3%
Katrin Fischer 2 3.5%
Frederic Demians 2 3.5%
Galen Charlton 2 3.5%
Joe Atzberger 1 1.8%
Magnus Enger 1 1.8%
Liz Rea 1 1.8%
Frédéric Demians 1 1.8%

 

Top changeset contributors by employer
(Unknown) 9 39.1%
Foundations 3 13.0%
ByWater-Solutions 3 13.0%
Tamil 2 8.7%
Biblibre 2 8.7%
PTFS-Europe 1 4.3%
Catalyst 1 4.3%
ACPL 1 4.3%
BSZ-BW 1 4.3%
Top lines changed by employer
Tamil 501846 99.3%
(Unknown) 2845 0.6%
ByWater-Solutions 234 0.0%
Foundations 220 0.0%
ACPL 39 0.0%
Biblibre 6 0.0%
Catalyst 3 0.0%
PTFS-Europe 2 0.0%
BSZ-BW 1 0.0%
Employers with the most signoffs (total 57)
Foundations 20 35.1%
Catalyst 17 29.8%
ByWater-Solutions 9 15.8%
(Unknown) 5 8.8%
Tamil 3 5.3%
BSZ-BW 2 3.5%
BigBallOfWax 1 1.8%