IRC log for #koha, 2005-07-07

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
12:34 Ryanbisd its quiet in here now..
12:37 owen Getting late for folks in France, and still too early for folks in New Zealand
12:43 Ryanbisd ahh...
13:21 thd_ What is done in Canadian libraries to bridge the MARC21 or CANMARC divide with UNIMARC?  I would think good format interoperability would be very important for libraries there.
13:32 owen We used to have a Canadian contributor, but he hasn't been heard from in a long time
14:17 Ryanbisd I take it you can edit the different themes?
14:17 Ryanbisd put in your own logos etc?
14:18 thd_ owen: The Koha Québec map is especially sparsely populated.
14:19 owen Ryanbisd, you can muck around with templates to your heart's content
14:19 Ryanbisd haha
14:19 owen The TMPL files are mostly plain HTML
14:20 owen The best way to go is to copy and rename the whole directory (e.g. \intranet-tmpl\default\en)
14:20 owen ...to /intranet-tmpl/ryan/en or something unique
14:20 owen Then switch templates in system preferences
14:23 thd_ Ryanbisd: Of course you would need to add template 'ryan' to the value list that appears on the same system preferences page.
14:26 owen No, those are automatically generated
14:29 thd_ owen: realy, it reads the file system?
14:29 owen Yes
14:29 thd_ owen: well that is very nice :)
14:30 thd_ owen: will it design my templates for me? :)
14:31 owen No, sorry.  Maybe in v. 5.0.
14:32 thd_ owen: be sure to add that to the roadmap :]
14:33 owen ...right between "Makes cappuccino" and "cures Athlete's Foot"
15:42 slef hi all
15:43 jcamins Hello.
15:45 slef Anyone else here for the installer?
15:46 jcamins I am. (Jared Camins... although you probably guessed)
15:46 slef cool... good to see you
15:47 jcamins I didn't think I'd be able to make such good time; sorry you had to reschedule to later on my account, and then have me show up early.
15:47 slef no worries... early evenings aren't great for me, really
15:48 slef (it's now 21:45 local time)
15:49 jcamins It's going to take me a while to get used to working with people outside my timezone. It's 16:45 in New Jersey.
15:50 slef on today's list traffic: what is TCL? Does it mean Tcl?
15:50 jcamins I believe so. That was my assumption, anyway.
15:51 jcamins Presumably someone who's more familiar with Zebra could actually tell you for sure.
15:51 slef well, I guess it's an abbreviation really, like laser
15:54 jcamins Did anyone else say they were planning on coming to this meeting?
15:55 slef not yet, but I guess we'll see
15:55 slef would have been better if I'd been able to email the list last week
15:55 slef I'm still waiting for a summary to return to me :-/
15:55 jcamins A summary of what?
15:56 slef 2.3 development work
15:56 jcamins Ah.
15:56 jcamins As you know, I'm new to Koha, so I'll be playing catch-up for quite a while, I suspect.
15:57 slef hey, I still am :-/
15:57 slef the whole z39.50 side is a mystery to me
15:58 jcamins Actually, that's one of the few things I understand. Well, to some extent.
15:59 slef So, why is it so tricky to get running? ;-)
15:59 jcamins Oh, that I don't know. I understand from the library's point-of-view.
15:59 slef well, I get how the protocol and concept works
16:00 jcamins I have most of my experience with Voyager. If something doesn't work right with Voyager, the incredibly expensive service contract takes care of it. ;)
16:01 slef I just don't understand why we keep the daemon. Maybe zebra will help that?
16:02 slef so, who's here? slef, jcamins, anyone else?
16:02 slef What topics do we want to cover?
16:03 thd_ I am here but ...
16:04 slef owen, thd_: jump in if anything occurs
16:04 slef I suggested: general structure, auto-install and localisation.
16:04 slef hah, let's wait for a few moments :-/
16:06 jcamins Oops.
16:06 slef welcome back jcamins. The X closes the window. ;-)
16:06 jcamins This is the first time using xchat, and apparently whatever keys I just hit are not supposed to be hit.
16:06 slef I suggested: general structure, auto-install and localisation.
16:06 jcamins Sounds good to me.
16:06 slef Any other topics we should cover?
16:07 jcamins None come to mind.
16:07 slef So, shall we aim for 15 minutes for each, or does one need more time?
16:08 jcamins I think 15 minute each is probably reasonable.
16:09 slef I'll introduce the current situation, then ask where we should go.
16:10 slef Currently, there's Install.pm containing the functions that do the actual installing, the messages displayed (english only so far) and a few helper routines.
16:11 slef Then there's install.pl and koha.upgrade (different authors, so different naming styles) which call those functions in an order to do an install or upgrade.
16:11 slef Finally, there are some .sql files to create the database and updatedatabase which upgrades old koha databases to the current schema.
16:12 slef Obvious problems are that it doesn't make for easy packaging and it isn't a good example of software engineering (low cohesion and poor coupling)
16:13 slef So, what do we want from an installer?
16:13 jcamins Just to check, the most recent versions of all those files ARE the ones in the koha/misc module, right?
16:13 slef yes
16:13 slef I think updatedatabase might be elsewhere in the tree.
16:14 jcamins Yeah. koha/updater
16:14 thd_ postgres support
16:15 slef jcamins: what's motivating your improvements?
16:15 slef thd_: I think that needs the other teams to agree, too. Postgres support in the installer wouldn't be too hard IMO.
16:15 jcamins My goal is to create a port that can be a part of the FreeBSD ports collection.
16:16 slef thd_: support in the installer won't make the rest of koha use it, though.
16:16 jcamins (a "port" in this sense is basically a Makefile specifying how to install the files; one of the requirements for getting a port committed is that user intervention not be required at installation)
16:16 slef jcamins: would it be easier to have a configure/build/install division?
16:16 jcamins Yes.
16:17 thd_ I have not asked about postgres before.  I found other questions more pressing.
16:17 jcamins The ports collection is designed around such a configuration (configure/build/install), although, of course, there are ways to get around that, such as eliminating the configure stage.
16:17 slef thd_: I'll talk to you about it in 32minutes, if you want.
16:18 thd_ slef: please do
16:19 slef jcamins: the main steps in the installation are figuring out the configuration (from httpd.conf and so on), writing the configuration files (= build?) and installing files and database
16:20 slef actually, it checks dependencies first
16:20 jcamins Writing files to the system is always part of the "install" phase in the FreeBSD ports system.
16:21 slef sure. I mean creating the files with the right contents... they could be copied to /etc in the install
16:21 jcamins Yeah, I'd agree.
16:22 slef Are other perl webapps packaged for freebsd?
16:22 jcamins I'm sure. Let me see if I can find an example
16:22 slef preferably something pretty complicated
16:22 jcamins I'd say Webmin qualifies.
16:23 thd_ everything should utimately be packaged for a particular OS if one has the resources to do so
16:23 slef (wow, zabriskie crashed on near-final corner of Tour de France TTT)
16:24 slef jcamins: do you have a URL for webmin's ports makefile?
16:24 jcamins Hold on a moment. I'll find it.
16:24 thd_ there once was a Debian package and a Red Hat package
16:25 thd_ what happened to their maintainers?
16:25 jcamins http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvs[…]/sysutils/webmin/
16:25 slef I don't know. I'd adopt a debian and upload it (I am a DD)
16:25 thd_ slef: DD?
16:26 jcamins I'm willing to do the RPM, unless there's someone more qualified.
16:26 slef would it be better to call ./installer.pl --configure or to have three scripts doing configure, build and install?
16:26 slef thd_: Debian Developer
16:27 chris there was a .deb for 1.2 .. steve tonnessen did it
16:27 jcamins Hm... I've seen ports which do things both ways. The advantage to splitting it up into multiple scripts is that it would be easier for a developer to find the part that s/he is looking for. The advantage to not splitting it is that the developer is more likely to remember all three stages.
16:27 thd_ what happened to steve tonnessen?
16:27 chris he got busy
16:28 slef jcamins: I think I can see other benefits, in that we could be conservative which prerequisites are needed in configure, but use all the toys in build and install
16:30 jcamins That's a good point. Split it, then?
16:30 slef If we have configure/build/install, what does auto-install mean? Does it just become some input to the configure stage?
16:30 jcamins Yeah, I think that would be about it.
16:31 slef Cool. So, time for an extra question: can MakeMaker do this for us, or is that for C bindings?
16:31 jcamins I'm not familiar with MakeMaker.
16:32 jcamins Oops. You meant the Perl MakeMaker.
16:32 slef me neither... I'm trying to see how apps are packaged for cpan.org and failing to navigate it.
16:33 slef CPAN only accepts modules and scripts, not multi-script applications.
16:33 jcamins I found a tutorial on MakeMaker from IBM, just using Google.
16:33 slef URL?
16:34 jcamins http://www-106.ibm.com/develop[…]brary/l-make.html
16:34 jcamins Actually, this looks very similar to the way the FreeBSD ports system works.
16:35 slef ; man ExtUtils::MakeMaker
16:36 jcamins Wow that's embarrassing. In my defense, up until recently I primarily used Perl on Windows. ;-)
16:36 slef oh, I often miss the blindingly obvious
16:38 jcamins I'm not clear on whether or not the configuration can be done with MakeMaker. The installation of files certainly could be.
16:38 slef Me neither. One to research.
16:39 jcamins Yeah. It would be great, though, to use a standard installer.
16:39 slef Probably be more useful for koha developers to learn, and more attractive to potential developers
16:40 jcamins Lower the barrier for entry, and reassure the sysadmins who don't like custom scripts.
16:40 slef I'll probably take a look and post any notes to koha-devel
16:40 slef (unless someone beats me to it)
16:41 jcamins Great. I'll look as well, although it'll probably take me a while to understand it. Perl is not one of the language I have a lot of experience in.
16:41 slef I've a while doing perl, but koha is a bigger scale than most I've done
16:41 jcamins Localization is something that I have no experience whatsoever with.
16:42 slef At the moment, the installer reads all its messages from strings set in Install.pm
16:42 slef They're stored in a two-level hash and {en} is one of the keys, so I think someone intended l10n later
16:43 slef I'm not sure that a hash of format strings is the best way of doing it.
16:43 jcamins Is there any standard for specifying translations in an external file?
16:43 thd_ I do not know the tool, but is gettext a standard tool for command line localisation?
16:44 slef In perl 5.8, Locale::Maketext is in the core. The installer could use that, but it would make koha need perl 5.8.
16:44 slef thd_: gettext is a common tool, but I don't think it's in perl core. Maketext's man page has a rant about gettext.
16:45 slef man Locale::Maketext::TPJ13
16:45 jcamins gettext also seems to be backwards-incompatible every other version.
16:45 thd_ I seem to remeber a discussion advocating perl 5.8 as a minimum for future versions of koha
16:46 slef I'm not sure this is such a big issue if we can pull off configure/build/install
16:46 slef rather than having the installer be a Q&A session
16:46 jcamins That's true.
16:46 jcamins Also, I'd think there would be some way to fall-back to English if localization wasn't available?
16:46 slef thd_: can you find that discussion?
16:47 slef jcamins: most ways allow fallback to original language (hey, I may decide to write the original in esperanto, just to annoy the latin crowd ;-) )
16:48 jcamins slef: You know Esperanto?
16:48 slef jes
16:48 slef learnt it last autumn
16:48 jcamins Useful, is it?
16:49 slef to sum up the plan: study MakeMaker and see if it's possible; split installer into the three stages; leave l10n until later
16:50 slef jcamins: pli
16:50 jcamins Yeah.
16:50 jcamins Sounds good to me.
16:51 slef thd_: I've asked for postgres in the past, but until 2.2 at least, MySQLisms were fairly well ingrained all through koha.
16:51 chris its getting less
16:52 jcamins The optimizations that were discussed a couple of weeks ago would strengthen the requirement on MySQL, though, wouldn't they?
16:52 slef jcamins: I can't learn all the world's languages, so it's useful for s.america and asia via gxangalo.com and raporto.info
16:52 chris most of the mysqlism were to try to get the search faster .. which if we move to using zebra as the base, we wont need
16:52 chris i dont think so jcamins .. should be the opposite id be hoping
16:53 jcamins There was something about MySQL 4.1 being required for some sort of index... Zebra would eliminate that?
16:54 thd_ I had hoped koha was DBI abstracted
16:54 slef early mysqls were pretty low on features... I still think postgres has more in most ways
16:54 chris yeah, i wrote koha with postgres first
16:54 jcamins I don't know. We always used MySQL because of the early Windows port.
16:55 chris ported to mysql in about november 99
16:55 chris just for speed
16:55 chris mysql has gained features postgres has gained speed
16:55 jcamins I'd be happy to learn Postgres and help out with that if people want to give me some pointers (and this is something that is going to be done).
16:55 chris they have nearly met in the middle now
16:55 chris there should be too many mysqlisms in the code i wrote, but i dont know how much of that is left anymore :)
16:56 slef thd_: DBI is only half the struggle. There's still a question of what sql strings you feed it. Until the security update, a lot of bits of koha were doing things like $dbh->do("select * from here where a = '".mysqlquote($foo)."'");
16:56 chris i doubt there is any of that anymore
16:56 chris but it wouldnt hurt to do an audit and kill whatever there is
16:56 slef if there is, someone's been adding them again :-/
16:57 chris C4::Biblio
16:57 chris would be my guess
16:58 chris the code makes use of mysqls auto_increment in some places .. but you can do the same with postgres
16:59 chris i think if we can move to more independence without sacrificing speed then that should be a goal for the next major release
16:59 chris but its easy to say that :)
17:00 chris anyway, i better get back to work
17:00 slef Is it on the roadmap?
17:00 chris not sure slef
17:00 slef ok, thanks for the comments :)
17:00 thd_ did you have speed issues before related to postgres specifically?
17:01 chris a long time ago
17:01 chris and that may have been due to my ineptitude more than postgres
17:01 chris but i did manage to speed koha up a lot by throwing mysql at it
17:02 thd_ it seems that postgres may not optimise well with limited ram
17:02 chris and since it was november and it had to go live jan 3 2000 .. that was the solution that stuck :)
17:02 thd_ but both postgres and mysql should be options if nothing is tied to one
17:02 slef It's not on http://wiki.liblime.com/doku.php?id=koha24rmnotes although there are other database comments
17:02 slef talk to kados, see if you can get it in
17:03 chris will do
17:03 jcamins Well, if you want to make Postgres and MySQL an option, those with more RAM can use Postgres, those with less RAM Mysql, right?
17:03 slef I'd say I'd help, but I've already other things I want to do during 2.3
17:03 chris yeah, me too, but if we get it on the map, someone might step up
17:04 thd_ an effort needs to be made to control the db flavour specific code to keep it from reappearing
17:04 jcamins I'd help out as best I'm able, after the installer is finished, but I don't know that my help would necessarily be an asset to the effort.
17:05 slef thd_: if you have time, you can follow koha-cvs list posts and correct/LART offences
17:06 slef chris: I'm not sure whther kados will start to cull tasks without developers
17:07 thd_ slef: I found the require 5.8 discussion. You were there participating.
17:08 thd_ slef: I will retreive a link.
17:08 chris yeah slef, we might need to do an orphaned tasks email and see if we can get some voluteers
17:10 jcamins slef: how/when are we going to follow up on dividing the installer into configure/build/install?
17:12 slef jcamins: first thing is to test MakeMaker and send notes to the list. After that, just start hacking the installer and sending patches. If you want to ask my opinion, drop me an email and I'll report or come on IRC, or you can jabber at mjr@jabber.ttllp.co.uk
17:13 jcamins slef: Okay. Sounds good. Thanks!
17:13 slef warn me if you're starting any really big surprises
17:14 slef If MakeMaker can't do it, I'd suggest making installer.pl into the install stage
17:14 thd_ slef: I guess there was not much more than this 25/06/05 07:14:49+-5<slef:#koha>I'm wondering whether koha should start moving towards Locale::Maketext now that it's in the perl core since 5.8
17:14 slef and writing new configure.pl and build.pl scripts
17:14 slef thd_: heh.
17:15 jcamins I will, but I'm inclined to doubt that I'll do anything very large or very surprising without pestering you for feedback. ;-)
17:17 slef Ah, it's "Where eagles dare"
17:17 slef "Agenten sterben einsam" just doesn't suggest that to me
17:25 Genji hiya all!
17:27 slef hi genji
17:28 Genji how goes it?
17:34 slef slowly
01:28 osmoze hello all
06:13 glatp was the meeting over?
07:42 Ryanbisd Good mornin all..
07:51 jean hi
08:14 jean Is there a need to upgrade the 2.2 database when moving to 2.3 ?
08:20 hdl No.
08:21 hdl Nothing changed ;)
08:21 jean ok thx :) . Nice answer
08:39 kados hdl: I installed Koha 2.2.3 last night ... and got an error from the installer:
08:39 kados hdl: DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Invalid default value for 'aqbudgetid' at scripts/updater/updatedatabase line 1117.DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Invalid default value for 'id' at scripts/updater/updatedatabase line 1117.
08:39 kados hdl: this was a new install
08:40 hdl kados : Odd ! I didnot commit anything for quite a few days now.
08:41 hdl But I am working onbudget.
08:43 hdl wait !!
08:43 hdl I saw a line in updater : aqbudget : aqbudgetid...
08:45 hdl kados : Was the base a brand new one from 2.0 ???
08:46 hdl I cant see any aqbudgetid addition in cvs logs...
08:58 kados hdl: very strange
08:58 kados hdl: I downloaded 2.2.3 and installed using the installer
08:58 kados hdl: on a brand new system
08:59 kados hdl: so base was not from 2.0
09:01 hdl did you try to look into the databse to see whether aqbudgetid was already there ?
09:02 hdl Brand new system ?
09:02 hdl Which version of mysql ?
09:02 hdl Maybe a change in autoincrement management system ?
09:02 hdl Would you investigate in that direction ?
09:50 kados hdl: the db was brand new
09:50 kados hdl: so aqbudgetid was not there
09:50 kados hdl: version 4.1 of mysql
09:51 thd I noticed the same issue installing 2.2.2b
09:51 hdl Is TinyInt allowed as auto_increment variable in this mysql version.
09:52 kados hdl: hmmm ... not sure
09:52 hdl I had no problems of that kind.
09:54 thd Also, there was a discussion as part of yesterday's installer meeting about removing Mysql specific code to support Koha in Postgres
09:55 kados hdl: not a bad idea
09:56 thd chris had removed some mysql specific code but others had been reintroducing such code
09:58 hdl I always installed kohabase from older bases... So no idea to know if mysql would be qmsldk with updatedatabase.
10:34 kados owen: I suspect googlebot or some other bot
10:35 owen Damn you googlebot!!!!1
10:36 kados :-)
10:52 tim Were you able to dig up my Athena ramblings from the mailing list kados?
11:07 thd tim: were referring to these http://lists.katipo.co.nz/publ[…]/2005/004610.html  http://lists.katipo.co.nz/publ[…]/2004/003234.html ?
11:40 tim thd:  Yeah.  the first link was one of 'em.
11:46 thd tim: what issues are you having with your record migration?
11:51 tim The MARC records seem to be in there ok now.
11:51 tim Patron records and current issues seem to be there too.
11:52 tim But overdues don't print, so I probably have something wrong there.
11:52 tim I'm looking into reserves

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