Meeting 24‐09‐2025

Date/Time

24/09/2025 at 17.00 CEST

Attending:

• David
• Olivia
• Jody
• Sebastien
• Guillaume

Agenda

• Wrap-up for GN User Meeting 2025
• Open PRs
• Next version: 4.4.9 / 4.2.14
• Issues needing attention
• Proposals

Wrap up for GN User Meeting 2025

How was it:

• Some files were shared and videos, thanks to organizers
  • Links are available for one month
  • Archive?
• Good attendance
• Slides and presentations were shared
• A few follow up sessions
  • Communication channels
  • How to make easier for users and newcomers to find information on the project
  • A BIG question regarding the website: should it be Wordpress? Should it be a Wiki? Should it be deployed from Github? Should it be something else?? It is not so useful, please update!
    • wiki: https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/wiki
    • docs: every page has an edit button
    • wordpress: sure, we would need to host
    • working group will work on that …
• Something discussed and presented
• Hot topics
  • DCAT Support
  • GN5 crowdfunding was presented: move to GN5 was one of the top three "hot topics"
    • Security Liability in GN4
    • No concrete pledge for crowdfunding
• Something about a new swiss schema

Miro board made during the meeting:

• What is data spaces:
  https://internationaldataspaces.org/

Actions:

• Sebastien: Setup meeting with jody about online help?
• Olivia: Make a https://geonetwork-opensource.org/news.html entry for user meeting

Open PRs

• Some DCAT formatter improvements
  • https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8992
    draft
  • https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/9039
    Ask Jose for review
• Croissant spec for schema.org formatter https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8939
• Perf improvement for Saxon: https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8994
• Bugs (2025 only)
  • https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/9031
  • https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/9033
  • https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/9037

Next version: 4.4.9 / 4.2.14

Coming up:

• Olivia is scheduled for October 2nd (next week)
  • Merge as much of the PRs above as possible

Issues needing attention

Any issues needed to be addressed for 4.4.9 / 4.2.14 release above?

• Sebastien has a number of fixes to support new swiss schema
  • Discussion on how to notify each other and communicate
  • test case included in PR cuts down on effort for manual review

Proposals (Chit Chat)

Discussion on proposal or features that people want to implement. Answers the question 'is this a good idea" :)

• Sebastien: Anonymous share links, allow anonymous users to access a non-public metadata record.
  • Sebastien: Take to discourse discussion? How does it handle permission etc…
  • Original issue: https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/issues/8637

Other

• Discuss time frame for phasing out 4.2.x / when will migration to 4.4 start happening for GeocatBV?
  • Jody: My expectation is 4.2.x winds down in 2025
  • Q: How is this shared?
    1. In meetings like this one
    2. State of GeoNetwork presentations / User Meeting etc…
    3. Also … spring-framework-5 is EOL …
       1. … so it is "obvious / urgent" that 4.x itself is reaching EOL
  • about latest / stable / maintenance 4. 4.x is winding down, so we will end up with 4.4.x as stable 2. minor features? yes but anything will be "double work" in 5.x / 4.x … 5. Q: Is there any interest in 4.2.x as maintenance? 3. Yes: critical security fixes for those that have not updated to 4.4.x yet 4. It is practically in maintenance already, folks are no longer putting "backport" label on everything
• 4.4.9 should have happened sooner? because 4.4.8 is essentially broken without this fix https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8855
  • Also having a workflow on the CI that tests the DB migration would be great
  • @Sébastien will create a PR for this
  • 4.4.9 is happening next week - so "soon" :)
• Should we envision a 4.6.0 which will host new features, and limit the 4.4.x branch to bugfixes? This would also limit the kind of problem mentioned above
  • jody: 4.x branch is reaching EOL folks, see spring-framework 5.x EOL.
  • sebastien: WIll be supporting until 5.x is available? 6. Q: Can you support 4.4.x? Or do you need a 4.6.x …
    A: Comfortable 7. Can revisit if need to arrises :)
  • Discussion, should be cautious about new features arriving on 4? 8. Many will be "lost" if budget not included to transition to 5.x 9. Have to be much more cautious not break a branch pragmatically acting as "stable"
  • Idea: Could we just consider 4.4.x as "latest" (fixes and new features)?
    And not have a "stable" (fixes only) branch …
    This in a sense would be more "honest", there is no "safe stable branch" available due to team capacity.
    Still new features should be reviewed a bit harder because you are disrupting production systems.