[Koha-devel] Some project ideas/feedback request

[Mark Tompsett]

Greetings,

I currently have two “big” requests on my plate right now: SAML 2.0 
authentication and multi-branch permissions. As a result, I was wondering 
what would be the best way to proceed such that patches I generate would 
make it into Koha eventually. Because if I have to keep rebasing, because 
the patch will never be accepted, that is a waste of time over the long 
term.

I have mentioned my SAML 2.0 request before and rangi suggested using 
mod_mellon on the IRC channel in the past. However, as I came back to 
looking at this problem, I found bug 8446 
(http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8446). I read the 
code, and frankly, I didn’t like that solution so much. However, Matthias 
Meusburger’s comment pointing to a biblibre patch looked promising. I like 
less apache2 config (not every person will have easy access to controlling 
their apache2 configuration). I like sysprefs to turn it on and off (not 
everyone will use this enhancement and it should be off by default). I think 
it could be adapted to SAML 2.0 relatively easily. The question that remains 
is, which method is the preferred method? Would a patch based off of 
biblibre’s patch be accepted? If not, what is the reasoning for not 
approving and is there a way to make it approvable? If so, are there others 
that would like this enhancement to happen?

And for the multi-branch permissions, any suggestions on where to put this 
or how to do this? There are a few ways of doing this, I think, but I’d like 
to find a way that would be accepted as an enhancement. The scenario driving 
this enhancement request is based on multiple library locations for 
differing entities needing administrative types for let’s say everything in 
the Philippines, or everything in another country, but not everything across 
the board (i.e. superlibrarian is overkill). Or perhaps, only X out of Y 
libraries in a given entity, and not necessarily all of them. And, perhaps 
not even having the same permissions for branch A and B.

Feedback, suggestions, discussion very much appreciated.

GPML,
Mark Tompsett