[Archivesspace_Users_Group] ArchivesSpace release candidate available - v2.0.0-RC1

[Christine Di Bella]

Dear ArchivesSpace members,

We are pleased to announce that a release candidate - v2.0.0-RC1 (https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-RC1) - is now available for download and testing purposes. Version 2.0.0 of ArchivesSpace will be a major release, with many changes to the underlying technologies of the application as well as improved functionality in some key areas. Summary information about these changes is available at the release notes accompanying the release candidate. The changes include upgrading to Rails 5, better performance for background jobs and larger databases, a new way to reorder components in resources and digital objects, and remediation of issues with reports.  By default, this file will use the current public interface for ArchivesSpace. This release candidate features substantial work from our development partner, Hudson Molonglo (HM), as well as contributions from community members.

Public User Interface (PUI)
The release notes indicate that the new public interface beta is available if you/your system administrator make a change to an environmental variable. Instructions for doing so are in the release notes. Because the new public interface is a beta (i.e. not ready for production use) and is still being actively worked on in order to get as much of the requested functionality into it as possible by the June full release, you should not change this setting on your production server, even if you are not currently using the public interface. This is essentially a sneak preview of major functionality and we look forward to your feedback. The beta includes many of the most complex elements of this work, and more functionality, including the ability to print records to PDF, will be included in the June release. The new public interface reflects tireless work in this area led by Mark Custer of Yale University, and features input from our member working group participants and web firm Cherry Hill Company (who worked with the group in 2015), as well as development by HM (largely funded by Yale) and Harvard developers. Details on this work, including the wireframes and functionality that are guiding the development phase of this work, are available at https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/display/ADC/Public+Interface+Enhancement+Project.

Testing and Feedback
Please try out this release candidate the next few days and let us know if you experience any problems. If you use this release candidate with your own data, please note that a full index is required. Also, please note that running reports requires a MySQL database backend. You will not be able to run reports with the embedded database.

If you don't wish to download anything at this time, you can still test drive the release candidate on our test site, http://test.archivesspace.org, using the standard administrative login (admin/admin). (The test server uses the current public interface; if you want to check out the beta of the public interface, HM has a preview site up at http://pui.hudmol.com/.)

As many of the changes this time are larger than single issues in JIRA, we're asking people to provide feedback by emailing me directly. Since the changes are throughout the application, we encourage you to run through the areas of the application you use regularly and let us know if anything that was working previously appears not to be, or if anything described about the new functionality is not working as intended. If possible, please submit your feedback no later than April 12. We will determine an exact release date for 2.0.0 when we are confident in the testing results.

Thanks
Thanks to HM for all their work on this release candidate, to our community members that contributed code, to those on the Prioritization, Reports, and Testing sub-teams who identified and tested the many changes, and to the Public Interface Enhancement Project participants for their extensive and continuing efforts. If you have any questions, or if you notice any issues while testing, please let us know.

Christine

Christine Di Bella
ArchivesSpace Program Manager
christine.dibella at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.dibella at lyrasis.org>
800.999.8558 x2905
678-235-2905
cdibella13 (Skype)

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