jQuery and AtoM 2.6

[holly.a....@gmail.com]

Hello All,

Does AtoM 2.6 support the use of jQuery 3.5.1?

Right now we are running AtoM 2.6.1 and using jQuery 1.10.2. As I understand it, jQuery 1.x and 2.x are no longer receiving patches. 

If this is not possible on 2.6.1, is there any idea of what version of jQuery is being used in 2.7?

Thank you for your time and your help with this.

Very Best,

Holly

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Holly, 

Unfortunately, we are unlikely to be able to upgrade jQuery in AtoM2 beyond the last 1.x version without major development. We are currently using Bootstrap 2.3.2 - later versions of Bootstrap (which support more recent versions of jQuery) introduced a great number of breaking changes. This would not only mean a lot of work to overhaul AtoM's code and account for the breaking changes, but it would also likely break every custom theme developed by our community, which would mean a lot of work for local developers to update. 

We'd very much like to see such maintenance upgrades happen at some point, but due to the size and scope of the work involved, we're unlikely to be able to do them without community support, either via code contributions or development sponsorship. To learn more about how we maintain and develop AtoM, please see: 

• https://wiki.accesstomemory.org/Development/Philosophy
  

In the meantime, we do intend to upgrade to the last jQuery 1.x version for the 2.7 release, and have been conducting internal reviews for any patches required to ensure the ongoing security and performance of AtoM. 

Regards, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

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[Holly McIntyre]

Thanks, Dan!

This is very helpful and thank you for your quick reply. Is there any way that you could share the list of breaking changes that a newer version of jQuery introduced? That way we could potentially contribute code as and if we are able to work through them.

Very Best,

Holly

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[Matt Pearson]

Dan, all,

I'd also be interested in knowing which breaking JQUERY code needs to be addressed for AtoM in order to upgrade to the latest supported library. Do you have results from the migration tool or a running list of deprecated JQuery that is in-use (excluding customizations)? If you have used the migration tool, did you have much luck with it for identifying code to re-write?

Thanks,

Matt

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Holly and Matt, 

We haven't run any analysis tools as of yet, mainly because of the big known blocker, which I mentioned previously: The version of Bootstrap we use (v2.3.2 - around which the base Dominion theme and therefore all of AtoM's CSS is built) does not support any version of jQuery past 2.1. Bootstrap introduced a number of breaking changes in later versions, and since AtoM's unfortunately kind of monolithic in design, this currently means a lot of work if you want to upgrade to Bootstrap 4 (or 3). 

If all that work were done to upgrade both Bootstrap and jQuery, we also have to consider the downstream effect on our community, knowing there are breaking changes. Mostly what I mean is: there are hundreds of AtoM sites we know about where maintainers have developed their own custom themes. If we released a new version of AtoM that upgrades Bootstrap, then either anyone with a custom theme cannot upgrade, or they will need to manually redo the theme, accounting for all the changes. 

We know we can upgrade to the last 1.x version of jQuery without impact, and will certainly be doing this for an upcoming release. It's possible we could upgrade to v2.1 (the latest version that Bootstrap 2.3.2 supports), though careful testing would need to be done throughout the entire application to see if anything breaks, where jQuery is used outside of Bootstrap. Once you want to start upgrading past that, then we need to consider Bootstrap as well - which as I've mentioned, is both a lot of work for us, and potentially a lot of work for our community when upgrading. 

One possible option our devs have mentioned: creating a new base theme for AtoM (e.g. arDominionBootstrap4Plugin or similar) that is built around Bootstrap 4, and including it as the non-default option. This would also require maintaining two sets of documentation for users to install the relevant dependencies, depending on which they intended to use, but at least it would give users with custom themes an option to move at their own pace. 

Holly, if you or your institution are seriously considering taking on some of this work, please feel free to contact us off-list, so we can best strategize on this. In the meantime, I'd encourage you to look over our Developer resources on the wiki - particularly our Community development recommendations if you intend to share this work back with the public project. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

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