[Koha-devel] Summary of today's IRC meeting, Koha 3.4 observations

[Chris Cormack]

On 10 February 2010 11:17, Darrell Ulm <darrellulm at smfpl.org> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> The following is not a positive or negative observation of the Koha 3.4 release
> as I think the goals set for Koha 3.4 are obviously very positive.
>
> I am just stating the obvious technical implications to any who may not know:
>
> I just wanted to state that with the goals of the 3.4 proposal
> at   http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:rm3.4proposal
> Koha 3.4 will be *quite* different from any other independent branches of Koha
>
> 3.0.x and/or 3.2 based versions of Koha. (This is of course *very* normal for
> most all software upgrades
>
> (3.0 -> 3.2 -> 3.4 -> etc.)
>       \
>        --> other branches ...
>
> Especially with the technical changes to the following:
>
> "
> C4::Search
> (XML out of circulation code)
> ...
> HTML::Template::Pro  ->  to  -> Template::Toolkit
> ...
> Database Abstraction
> MySQL & Postgres Abstraction Layer
> "
>
> All of these are obviously very desired improvements as is the following
>  improvement
>
> "
> Packaging
> Debian packaging for 3.4 is a major goal
> "
> (*This* is just great! Think of the THOUSANDS of libraries that will download
> the Official Koha 3.4 community version exclusively once it is a simple Debian
> Linux package, and install it with ease! This is excellent and very important to
> include! How many libraries in the future will be downloading the 3.4 community
> version?
>
> and each of these will make Koha 3.4 a great ILS, and the performance and
> abstraction are key.
>
> Again, correct me if I am wrong, but many would say that these changes will make
> Koha so different from other independent branches (choose your favorite) that
> these other versions will have little future compatibility with the official
> Koha 3.4 community version. Correct me if I this is not quite correct, as in a
> sense, I am basically posing this statement as a *question*.
>
Hi Darrell

The answer is not necessarily, because everything mainstream Koha does
is in a publicly accessible repository there is nothing stopping those
maintaining forks from keeping their forks up to date.
Of course if their forks were public also, then the code could flow
both ways, maybe in the new environment this will happen.

But it will be up to those maintaining their forks to keep them up to
date.  As far as I know there is only one deliberate major fork, and
those maintaining it are not interested in compatibility with
mainstream Koha. I'm hoping this will change, and if it does, then the
repo is there waiting for integration.

Chris
RM 3.4.x

> These are *great* changes and *great* ideas and kudos to everyone who is leading
> the way on this!
>