#mahara-dev Meeting

Meeting started by rkabalin_ at 08:02:49 UTC (full logs).

Meeting summary

    1. Welcome to the 38th Mahara developer meeting. Please state your name and where you are from for the minutes. If you are saying something very long, please put ".." on an empty line by itself to indicate your statement is finished. (rkabalin_, 08:03:01)
    2. ghada-laptop is Ghada El-Zoghbi at Catalyst IT, Sydney, Australia. (ghada, 08:03:07)
    3. anitsirk is Kristina Hoeppner, Catalyst IT, Wellington, New Zealand (anitsirk, 08:03:10)
    4. rkabalin is Ruslan Kabalin, Lancaster University, UK (rkabalin_, 08:03:12)
    5. tobiasz is Tobias Zeuch, developer at KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany (tobiasz2, 08:03:13)
    6. robertl_ is Robert Lyon, Catalyst IT, Wellington, NZ (robertl_, 08:03:17)
    7. aarowlaptop is Aaron Wells at Catalyst IT in Wgtn NZ (aarowlaptop, 08:03:25)
    8. son is Son Nguyen, Catalyst IT, Wellington, NZ (son, 08:03:28)

  2. Items from last meeting (rkabalin_, 08:04:20)
    1. robertl_ to add info about sslverify (rkabalin_, 08:04:24)
    2. https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Pushing_Git_Commits#Not_Signed-off-by (robertl_, 08:04:43)
    3. https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Pushing_Git_Commits#Server_certificate_verification_failed (aarowlaptop, 08:05:20)
    4. robertl_ updated the notes at (rkabalin_, 08:05:26)
    5. https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Pushing_Git_Commits#Server_certificate_verification_failed (rkabalin_, 08:07:22)
    6. robertl_ to improve the documents about needing to sign-off a patch (rkabalin_, 08:08:31)
    7. https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Pushing_Git_Commits#Not_Signed-off-by (rkabalin_, 08:08:51)
    8. kristina to update wiki with links to more of the Mahara groups (rkabalin_, 08:09:44)
    9. a list of Mahara groups that are known to me are now listed at https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Community_resources/Mahara_users_on_social_media (anitsirk, 08:09:47)
    10. https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Community_resources/Mahara_users_on_social_media (anitsirk, 08:09:49)
    11. I am also in the process of renaming the "Marketing" section to "Community resources" as marketing does not really fit with what we have in that section (anitsirk, 08:10:29)
    12. kristina to explain the change in the numbering scheme and then post it wherever I find (rkabalin_, 08:12:14)
    13. the announcement is made at (anitsirk, 08:12:17)
    14. https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=6530 (anitsirk, 08:12:17)

  3. Do we need the "Signed off by" line for commits anymore? (AaronW) (rkabalin_, 08:15:50)
    1. We have a coding guideline that says to use a "Signed off by" line on all our commits (anitsirk, 08:16:41)
    2. IDEA: from aarowlaptop: We should just make the "author" line in the commit hold the author, and use the "Signed-off by" as an optional add-on when there are multiple people who contributed to a commit (anitsirk, 08:17:40)
    3. the Signed-off line as introduced in the wake of the SCO lawsuit, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1962094/what-is-the-sign-off-feature-in-git-for for example (anitsirk, 08:28:09)
    4. IDEA: probably good to have it optional. And, when there are multiple authors, use it to indicate multiple authors (rkabalin_, 08:29:21)
    5. ACTION: aarowlaptop update the wiki with "Signed-off" line necessity changes (rkabalin_, 08:31:09)
    6. AGREED: use the "Signed-off by" as an optional add-on when there are multiple people who contributed to a commit (rkabalin_, 08:31:30)
    7. ACTION: aarowlaptop change gerrit to accept commits without "Signed-off" line (rkabalin_, 08:32:28)

  4. Do we stay with Dwoo or move to Smarty (or something else)? (robertl_) (rkabalin_, 08:34:58)
    1. robertl_ is looking at updating a number of things in mahara, templates/css/javascript (rkabalin_, 08:36:40)
    2. https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/966001 for some background reading (anitsirk, 08:37:25)
    3. Smarty is closer to Dwoo so it's probably easier to convert to (we could just run our Smarty -> Dwoo conversion scripts in reverse) (anitsirk, 08:39:02)
    4. http://meetbot.mahara.org/mahara-dev/2012/mahara-dev.2012-03-27-07.41.html (anitsirk, 08:41:34)
    5. the last time we discussed templates was in March 2012 (see above link) (anitsirk, 08:41:48)
    6. Smarty, as far as aarowlaptop can tell, is nearly identical to Dwoo in functionality. Thus, moving to it shouldn't be too difficult. (anitsirk, 08:44:12)
    7. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15011094/twig-vs-smarty-benchmark (ghada, 08:49:24)
    8. ACTION: aarowlaptop will compare all aspects of Smarty and Twig and write wiki on this change proposal (rkabalin_, 08:49:56)
    9. http://umumble.com/blogs/php/smarty-vs-twig%3A-performance/ (ghada, 08:50:32)
    10. According to http://umumble.com/blogs/php/smarty-vs-twig%3A-performance/ Smarty is 60 times faster than Twig (aarowlaptop, 08:52:52)

  5. Move to a CSS framework instead of keeping our custom responsiveness (@anitsirk) (rkabalin_, 08:54:32)
    1. One standing item on our loose roadmap is to improve usability. Another one is to make it easier for designers to create a theme for Mahara. Currently, Mahara uses as custom implementation of responsive design that is becoming difficult to maintain and to expand. (anitsirk, 08:54:48)
    2. IDEA: Therefore, we are looking into moving to use a CSS framework. (anitsirk, 08:54:56)
    3. We also considered the argument that Moodle uses Bootstrap and so should we to make it easier, see https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=6553 (anitsirk, 08:55:08)
    4. http://getbootstrap.com/ (anitsirk, 08:55:19)
    5. Pro Bootstrap: Large community, lots of people use it, lots of extensions (anitsirk, 08:55:19)
    6. Con Boostrap: Moodle is only on 2.3 and thus a very different version from Bootstrap 3 (different enough to get confusing) (anitsirk, 08:55:19)
    7. http://gumbyframework.com/ (anitsirk, 08:55:19)
    8. Pro Gumby: Very flexible as there are several ways of doing things (CSS, HTML, semantic grid), seems to be easier to work with (but that might be subjective), easier to style for CSS straight away than Bootstrap -> can do more in the CSS layer, e.g. you can add more to the templates yourself (anitsirk, 08:55:36)
    9. Con Gumby: smaller community than Bootstrap (but it's not a one-man project) (anitsirk, 08:55:36)
    10. As for the argument that many people already know Bootstrap: Bootstrap components an be used in Gumby and vice versa as they are compatible to a degree. (anitsirk, 08:55:48)
    11. Another alternative would be to use Base which is a leightweight CSS framework that doesn't come with its own JavaScript like Bootstrap and Gumby do. (anitsirk, 08:55:49)
    12. http://matthewhartman.github.io/base/ (anitsirk, 08:55:49)
    13. We should also figure out what we value in a framework that we choose: is it Flexibility (Gumby), community (Bootstrap) or lightweight (Base)? (anitsirk, 08:56:00)
    14. We are also planning on giving our themes a refresh, but would only tackle this once we've implemented a CSS framework so that the work of creating the themes wouldn't have to be done twice. (anitsirk, 08:56:00)
    15. IDEA: see if it were possible to keep a legacy base theme of which existing themes could inherit so they don't have institutions don't have to create a new theme immediately (anitsirk, 09:14:16)
    16. ghada: if you remove it right away without giving users breathing space, you may find that it's not taken up (anitsirk, 09:15:16)
    17. ACTION: leave CSS framework porposal up to the front-end experts to hash it out with aarowlaptop (rkabalin_, 09:23:59)
    18. we need to try hard to keep legacy support while implementing CSS framework (rkabalin_, 09:26:56)

  6. Message composition when replying to an internal_notification (tobiasz2) (rkabalin_, 09:27:14)
    1. IDEA: to implement: making the message content, recipient list and the list of reply-buttons open and close simultaneously, triggered by clicking on either the message subject, the extend-button behind the first recipient or into the reply-column (anitsirk, 09:37:22)

  7. Next meeting and chair (rkabalin_, 09:43:30)
    1. BTW: robertl_ had updated the release schedule: https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/6MonthlyCycle (anitsirk, 09:49:08)
    2. AGREED: 39th Mahara dev meeting on Wednesday, 17th of December 2014 at 8 AM UTC (rkabalin_, 09:53:00)
    3. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=39th+Mahara+Developer+Meeting&iso=20141217T08 (anitsirk, 09:54:11)
    4. @anitsirk kindly agreed to chair the next meeting. (rkabalin_, 09:56:38)

  8. Any other business (rkabalin_, 09:57:14)
    1. The next newsletter articles are due right before the holidays kick in. if you have anything that you want to let the community know, please send it to me at newsletter@mahara.org (anitsirk, 09:58:05)


Meeting ended at 09:59:39 UTC (full logs).

Action items

  1. aarowlaptop update the wiki with "Signed-off" line necessity changes
  2. aarowlaptop change gerrit to accept commits without "Signed-off" line
  3. aarowlaptop will compare all aspects of Smarty and Twig and write wiki on this change proposal
  4. leave CSS framework porposal up to the front-end experts to hash it out with aarowlaptop


Action items, by person

  1. aarowlaptop
    1. aarowlaptop update the wiki with "Signed-off" line necessity changes
    2. aarowlaptop change gerrit to accept commits without "Signed-off" line
    3. aarowlaptop will compare all aspects of Smarty and Twig and write wiki on this change proposal
    4. leave CSS framework porposal up to the front-end experts to hash it out with aarowlaptop


People present (lines said)

  1. rkabalin_ (135)
  2. anitsirk (109)
  3. aarowlaptop (65)
  4. robertl_ (62)
  5. ghada (43)
  6. tobiasz2 (41)
  7. tonyjbutler (9)
  8. son (5)
  9. maharameet (3)


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