February 2023 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

Using "ucf" to manage log4perl.conf
by David Cook 10 Mar '23

10 Mar '23

Hi all, I've attached an "alternative" patch on "Bug 32791 - Log4perl configuration files need a tool for updating on package upgrade". It uses the utility "ucf" to manage log4perl.conf. It works well for handling upgrades to log4perl.conf configuration, but it needs more testing and some more consideration for koha-create, koha-remove, and apt-get purge. Is anyone else interested in working on this with me? David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595

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Fixing perltidy in ktd
by David Cook 10 Mar '23

10 Mar '23

Hi Tomas, I saw you, Katrin, and Jonathan writing in #koha about perltidy. When I've tried previously to perltidy in ktd using the ":Tidy" command, it seemed to change the style to something incompatible with https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines If I type "vi Koha.pm", then ":echo $MYVIMRC", it tells me I'm using the /root/.vimrc file. I'm not overwriting that, so it's the default file that ships with ktd. I don't have a good example off the top of my head though. I've just tried perltidying debian/scripts/koha-log4perl from https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32791. There are things that look weird to me but after reviewing the coding guidelines, maybe I've been wrong all this time. For example: - my $snippet = get_snippet({ - instance => $instance, - component => $component, - }); - if ($snippet){ + my $snippet = get_snippet( + { + instance => $instance, + component => $component, + } + ); I always thought we preferred to keep the brackets on the same line (like in all the JS examples on the wiki). It looks like perltidy sometimes mangles the whitespace for comments as well. I'd correctly indented a comment and then perltidy stripped all the whitespace except for 2 leading spaces. That all said. overall it probably does look better, so maybe the out of the box perltidy is good enough, and if the same perltidy file is applied across the board I suppose it doesn't matter. David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595

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Koha Community Newsletter: February 2023
by Koha Newsletter 27 Feb '23

27 Feb '23

The Koha Community Newsletter for February 2023 is here: https://koha-community.org/koha-community-newsletter-february-2023/ Many thanks to everyone who submitted articles and news to this newsletter! Please feel free to email me with any corrections or suggestions. -- Michael Kuhn Editor, Koha Community Newsletter

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Permissions on Pootle
by Tiago Murakami 24 Feb '23

24 Feb '23

Hi, I´m a librarian in Brazil. I had Pootle permissions for translation, but, I only have them for suggestions. What is the best way to ask for permission to translate Pootle in pt-BR? Thanks in advance, -- Tiago Murakami

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Koha 22.11.03 release
by Renvoize, Martin 23 Feb '23

23 Feb '23

Hello, Bonjour, Ola, Kia ora, 今日は, The Koha community is pleased to announce the release of version 22.11.03. This release is a bugfix/maintenance release with a small number of minor architectural enhancements to aid in the continued maintenance of this version. It includes 40 enhancements and 87 bugfixes. For full release notes, please visit https://koha-community.org/koha-22-11-03-released/ Thanks for anybody involved! 🚀 Martin Renvoize, MPhys (Hons) Head of Development and Community Engagement E: martin.renvoize(a)ptfs-europe.com P: +44 (0) 1483 378728 M: +44 (0) 7725 985636 www.ptfs-europe.com

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Random data in CGI Vars
by Julian Maurice 23 Feb '23

23 Feb '23

Hello, I've been encountering strange bugs on two different Koha instances (both 21.11). When cataloguing new records, instead of the record being saved, users are being redirected to an empty cataloguing form (like if they clicked on "New record"). They have to use "Back" and submit the form again until it works. I suspected something going wrong in how the form data was being sent to Koha so I added the following line in cataloguing/addbiblio.pl warn Data::Dumper->Dump([{ $input->Vars }], ['Vars']) . "\n"; right after CGI->new And indeed there is something going wrong. Some of the variables are replaced by random data. Here's an example: 'tag_041_subfield_a_452653_624274' => '', '' => "Ly[\x{1cf}^KJ{)Z\x{fffd}(-D<\x{fffd}\x{fffd}\x{fffd}BN", 'tag_856_code_x_883542_376496' => 'x', Sometimes the 'op' parameter is replaced by random data, and that's why we see this strange behaviour. Have you ever experienced something like this ? Do you know where it could come from ? -- Julian Maurice BibLibre

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Re: [Koha-devel] ChatGPT and Koha
by David Cook 23 Feb '23

23 Feb '23

I understand what you’re saying because it says its knowledge after 2021 is limited, but it also has a greater breadth of knowledge than your 2 year-ago self. It claimed that some of its Vue.js answers were due to the conventions used by the Vue.js community, which was fascinating. It differed from some examples I found online in Vue.js documentation, so it would be interesting to know if the AI was out of date or if the documentation was out of date. Considering the explanation it gave for its answer, I think the documentation was probably out of date, as it gave a better answer than the documentation. (I found ChatGPT was able to answer my Vue.js questions much better than the official Vue.js documentation and most of the examples I could find online.) I asked it to explain some general best practices for processing background tasks and distributed computing and it gave some excellent answers (and follow-up answers to follow-up questions). It certainly offers a better understanding of those topics than any Koha community developer has. I told it that its not particularly skilled at very specific tasks (like writing a Koha plugin), but it’s very good with fundamentals, and it mentioned that explaining fundamentals is one of its primary goals. It’s not there to write your code for you, but to offer advice/guidance to help you write code better. That said, it’s not always 100% correct either. You do have to consider its answers critically, and sometimes it’s just plain wrong, although usually its wrong in terms of minor details, and if you point out its mistake, it gets the correct answer. I was quizzing it on the use of some Perl POE modules from CPAN and there were times it tried to pass options that just didn’t exist (and have never existed). But its corrections were accurate and followed the concurrent programming designs I used myself years ago with those modules. On the other hand, I had it design a recursive algorithm in PHP for filtering data, and while its first attempts were close, the more I tried to get it to fix it, the worse it got until it was absolutely unusable. Perhaps the problem was the AI or perhaps the problem was with my instructions. I just asked it to do an algorithm for converting ISBN-13 to ISBN-10 in Javascript. I already wrote one myself a few days ago, and it’s interesting to compare. Its algorithm is probably 98% correct, and it wrote it more concisely than I did (although we know I love verbosity). Licensing is certainly a tough topic (consider the licensing problems with GitHub Copilot). According to a post online, it claims not to have a licence on its code, but advises checking with legal professionals to be on the safe side. However, I don’t think a person would really be using the code generated by ChatGPT. The code it generates tends to be example code. The kind of thing you’d find in documentation, tutorials, Stackoverflow, etc. It’s good for illustrating concepts, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to copy/paste it, and just use it. It probably wouldn’t help a person to write “Koha code”, but it could help a person to better understand a concept they need to know while writing “Koha code”. Another example… I just asked “could you generate a functional operating system from scratch?” It said that it could not, but outlined what a person would need to do in order to write one, and gives some good warnings about why it’s probably not a good idea to try to do it solo haha. I know this email is too long, but I suppose I’d just emphasize that it’s a very interesting “helper”. David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595 From: Jonathan Druart <jonathan.druart(a)gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, 22 February 2023 7:24 PM To: David Cook <dcook(a)prosentient.com.au> Cc: koha-devel <koha-devel(a)lists.koha-community.org> Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] ChatGPT and Koha For Koha core developers I am not sure it is relevant. Hasn't ChatGPT been fed with 2 years old data? With data we actually wrote ourselves. So basically if I ask it something I am requesting what my 2 year-ago self knew? I have certainly forgotten some stuff, but I also know that what was true 2 years ago is no longer 100% correct. By the way, what would be the license for such generated code? Certainly GPLv3 for Koha, but what about Vue.js code for instance? Le mer. 22 févr. 2023 à 01:53, David Cook <dcook(a)prosentient.com.au <mailto:dcook@prosentient.com.au> > a écrit : Hi all, Like many around the world, I may have been bitten by the ChatGPT bug… Most of my ChatGPT questions have been more general in nature, but I figured I’d ask it about Koha, as there is a lot of public information, but it’s still a niche topic. I asked it to generate me a Koha plugin, and it refused for a while, but eventually I was able to convince it to try. The result wouldn’t even compile, but it got a lot of things right. In other conversations, it’s made mistakes but always done a good job of fixing its mistakes. Has anyone else played with ChatGPT and Koha or ChatGPT in general (on IT topics)? David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595 _______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel(a)lists.koha-community.org <mailto:Koha-devel@lists.koha-community.org> https://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel website : https://www.koha-community.org/ git : https://git.koha-community.org/ bugs : https://bugs.koha-community.org/

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Volunteer needed to open the bidding for KohaCon24 & need confirmation of task list
by tuxayo 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi :) The things to do are: - making the wikipage using the template - make an announcement email using past ones - send reminders - @all: anything else? The aim is to start the bid in the next weeks so proposals that start early 2024 have time to plan. And let the bid run until the next general meeting in april I can help with proofreading and finding past resources. (wikipage template, emails) Cheers, -- tuxayo

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Pull newer images today :-D
by Tomas Cohen Arazi 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi, we've just pushed a change to Koha, moving away from node-sass to dart-sass, and older docker images will fail as all assets are automatically built on startup and it will fail otherwise. Best regards -- Tomás Cohen Arazi Theke Solutions (http://theke.io) ✆ +54 9351 3513384 GPG: B2F3C15F

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koha-testing-docker startup gotcha...
by David Cook 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi all, With the latest version of koha-testing-docker, you might have problems getting it to start up if your "koha" git directory is not owned by UID 1000. I use koha-testing-docker on Windows, so I use a named volume to mount my "koha" git directory. It also means that I cloned that git repo and do my checkouts with the "root" user in koha-testing-docker (not as my normal user on a Docker host like you would do if you were using Linux as your workstation). So "root" owns my "koha" git directory, which causes koha-testing-docker to fail to startup. I've worked around that by chowning my "koha" git repo to be owned by UID 1000, and that's got it starting up, but it could have future issues where permissions aren't quite right. Anyway, just something to be aware of. David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595

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