[Archivesspace_Users_Group] What's the status of the as_history plugin?

[Ron Van den Branden]

Hi all,

I've been able to set up a local ArchivesSpace test instance and am diving into the treasury of available plugins. On top of my list was the as_history plugin (https://gitlab.gaiaresources.com.au/qsa/as_history).

In short, I'm wondering what its status is. From a previous exchange in May on this mailing list (http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/2023-May/010003.html), I recall how James Bullow added the disclaimer that the public version was tied to the specific context in which it had been developed and probably won't work in other contexts. Yet, installing and browsing records' history works like a charm, only restoring previous versions throws an error. 

Since most of it seems to work surprisingly well, I'd like to know if it has been developed further and is ready for the "outside world". If so:

• would this mailing list be the place to report bugs, or would the Gitlab issue tracker be the best forum?
• has it been used on a large scale? We're migrating a repo of about 2k resources, 190k archival objects, 69k agents into ArchivesSpace. I know as_history will only start logging the history from that migration onward, but I can imagine the history for such an amount of records would be considerable. Is it feasible to use as_history for this magnitude of data?

Best,

Ron

Ron Van den Branden | functioneel analist - applicatiebeheerder Letterenhuis

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[James Bullen]

Hi Ron,

We developed the as_history plugin as part of the Queensland State Archives Digital Archiving Program.

It has been running in production as part of that system for a few years. The QSA instance of ArchivesSpace is a very heavily customized fork from v2.5-ish. Many changes in our fork have found their way into AS core code - bug fixes, optimizations and enhancements. One of those changes was required for the open source version of as_history to work. Now that that change is in AS, as_history should more or less work correctly with vanilla AS.

However, the plugin is maintained exclusively to function as part of the QSA system, so we still don’t recommend using it in production.

To your questions:

• Since as_history is maintained as part of the QSA system, it doesn’t really make sense to report bugs discovered when running it out of that context. If you find some problems, or have some suggestions for enhancements, or indeed, any contributions, it is probably best just to email me.
• The QSA system has millions of records. The plugin has been running successfully as part of that system for a few years. So, yes, it has been proven to work at scale.

Cheers,

James

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James Bullen

Director/Developer

Hudson Molonglo

hudsonmolonglo.com

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