Evergreen ILS

Open Source Library Software

Releases

Evergreen 1.2.0

It’s amazing the emphasis folks put on public-facing software version numbers, and I used to think such things were mostly hype and marketing. However, we’ve been sitting on 1.2 (just released yesterday!) for longer than we would with a normal release, and we already have enough new things in the mainline trunk to cut a 1.2.2, and indeed there are a few tweaks and fixes that I feel compelled to check into the rel_1_2 branch for a future 1.2.x. So what is so special about 1.2? Well, there are some new features and architectural improvements, but more important is the list of contributors.

Evergreen 1.2 is the first Evergreen release that has received substantial contributions (patches, documentation, feedback, suggestions, testing, etc.) from folks affiliated with neither the Georgia Public Library Service nor Equinox Software.

So as a milestone, 1.2 is really significant because it is truly a community release. Thanks folks!

The next major milestone is 1.4, with which we can expect full internationalization, again, courtesy of the community.

— Jason

It’s the newwwwwww style

This afternoon, rather quietly, I posted the first release candidate for Evergreen 1.2.0 on the Open-ILS.org download page. This is a big milestone for the project and for the developers. It’s also a big milestone for those interested in adopting Evergreen outside of PINES. The 1.0 series was pretty heavily skinned for PINES, with the images, rules, and default configuration, and new backend features were slow to be incorporated due to the pain of updating the database schema. The shiny new 1.2 series removes almost all traces of PINES-specific images and default rules, and contains many new backend improvements. It is also the first non-experimental release to include a significant amount of code not created directly by GPLS and PINES.

[Read more…] about It’s the newwwwwww style

Pile o’ stuff

Wow. It’s been a crazy two months. We’ve been going strong, if silent, and overall things have been going swimmingly. Some highlights:

  • The mailing lists finally got busy (yay!), and to help sort through some of our growing pains we put together a document to help early adopters and contributors to get their feet wet
  • Brought on a new system, South Georgia Regional, during the first half of December and they’ve been humming right along
  • Added snazzy new back-end storage and search functionality which should allow all sorts of new data access patterns
  • Brought on another new system, Thomas County Public, on February 1st while I (miker) was at…
  • …the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference talking about metadata normalization and how generally and specifically we can use said to increase the utility of the OPAC for our patrons
  • Bill headed up north to Rochester, NY, to attend the XC (eXtensable Catalog) partners meeting — for which I am very jealous, as he got to meet the (in)famous Roy Tennent
  • And, last but not least, we managed to squeeze Evergreen version 1.0.2 out the door. You can expect more frequent release in the near term, and we are currently targeting sometime this spring for 1.2.0

All in all, we really should have filled up several pages here, so … sorry. 🙂 Perhaps some more detail will come soon…