[Koha-devel] Moving system preference serialization into the database

[Frederic Demians]

> As regards the system preference issue in particular, the problem may
> be better resolved by moving the serialization into a table in the
> database. As it stands presently, part of the system preference data
> is kept in the database in the systempreferences table while the other
> part is kept in the *.pref files. Moving the serialization into the
> database will have the benefits of keeping the data in one location as
> well as overcoming the file writing issues.

Isn't it too late? To be translatable you need not to forget to 
serialize syspref templates per language, and then:

    * modify syspref editor to get YAML data from DB rather than from
      .pref files, per language
    * modify translation process (LangInstaller.pm) to extract text from
      DB and and write into DB

It would be very useful to have a complete API to manage sysprefs and 
allowing to add, modify, update sysprefs, integrated with updatabase.pl 
process.

Now when we add a new syspref, we have to:

   1. Add some text into a .pref file (history in git)
   2. Add an INSERT statement to syspref table into kohastructure.sql
   3. Modify various default values per language located in
      installer/data/mysql/<lang>/.../default-syspref.sql
   4. Update DB number kohaversion.pl and add in updatabase.pl an INSERT
      statement.

Any sysprefs modification should aim at simplification. There is room 
for simplification:

    * Clearly distinguish syspref values from a koha instance (stored in
      DB) and syspref templates (.pref file/db)
    * Put default values per language directly in .pref file (or DB but
      how will you track modifications by developers, we have git now)
    * Delete all perl language default values located in
      installer/data/mysql...
    * Delete deprecated fields in syspreferences table: options,
      explanation, type. And modify accordingly all .sql files.


-- 
Frédéric DEMIANS