[Koha-devel] RFC: plan to reorganize cronjobs for overdues, notices, and fines

[Andrew Moore]

Hi Koha Developers -

After a brief audit of some of the code in misc/cronjobs it looks to
me that the cronjobs that handle things like overdues, notices, and
fines could use some work. There's a lot of overlapping functionality
in the scripts in that directory, and not everything that we need for
3.0 is there yet. So, I'm hoping to find a reasonable way to get what
we need easily. I'm looking for guidance here on developing a roadmap,
so please speak up if you have recommendations.

These are the scripts that I think we need:

overdue_notices.pl - will prepare notices for items that are overdue.
This increments the overdue notice counters.
fines.pl - will calculate and update patron fines. This will NOT
prepare notices.
advance_notices.pl - will prepare notices for items that are not yet
due, or have just become due. Patrons will have the option of
receiving these or not.

This is what will happen to many of the scripts that are there now:

overduenotices-30.pl will get folded into overdue_notices.pl
overduenotices-csv.pl will get folded into overdue_notices.pl
overduenoties.pl will get replaced by overdue_notices.pl
smsoverdues.pl will get replaced by overdue_notices.pl

fines2.pl will get replaced by fines.pl
fines-ll.pl  will get folded into fines.pl. This script has good
calculation stuff that should be salvaged.
fines-sanop.pl will most likely be replaced by fines.pl.

There are also some changes to the staff interface that will probably
be done, as there is a similar disorganization there, but we can deal
with that separately, I think.

If we can agree on a general path like this, it will help us work
together to reach a common goal. I can certainly get to much of this
work myself in time, but there is some work going on in this directory
by others and I want to make sure I'm not stepping on anyone's toes.

If it looks like this path won't get us to where you think we should
be, please speak up. If it looks like this is a reasonable way to
proceed, please feel free to help out.

Thanks!
-Andy
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