Hydra Framework and Hydrangea Update: August 2010
Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by matt in Hydra
In case you’ve been curious about the current status of the Hydra project, here is the latest rundown of what we’ve done so far and what we plan to do over the coming months.
First, here are some links to stable reference material:
- Your main source of information about the Hydra Project is still the Hydra section on the DuraSpace Wiki
- Within that wiki, you will find information about Hydrangea, the reference implementation of a Hydra “Head”
- We have posted a helpful description of the Hydra Architecture along with a glossary of Hydra terms
- All work on Hydrangea and the Hydra Framework is now tracked in the publicly accessible Hydra Jira Project, which is hosted by DuraSpace
What is finished in Beta1 (Released early August)
The Hydrangea Beta1 Scoping Notes and Development Plan contains a detailed breakdown of the functionality we set out to implement by August 2010. All of this functionality is complete except for:
- in-page workflow indicators within object submission / editing page
- support for two-stage, two party workflow (deposit -> review -> publish)
Our simple workflow solution and a number of bug fixes are queued up for Hydrangea Beta2 which will be out soon.
This was going to be Hydrangea 1.0, but we decided that we wanted to put more in there first.
Separately Releasing Hydra Plugin 1.0
Some people want a full Hydra Head (Hydrangea or otherwise) to start their work from. Others just want a base of code that will allow them to build their own Hydra Head. To support these two approaches, we are splitting the Hydra Plugin into its own code base and setting up a separate release cycle for the Plugin, independent of the Hydrangea Hydra Head.
Our priority with the plugin is to provide a stable, useful base of code for you to build Hydra Heads on. This especially relies on establishing and sticking firmly to conventions about metadata management, object modeling, and managing object relationships. Most of those conventions are already documented in the Hydra wiki. Our biggest priority for Plugin 0.9 is to ensure that the Plugin code adheres to these conventions.
Tickets for the Plugin are being tracked in Jira under releases named Plugin 0.9 and Plugin 1.0.
What will be in Hydrangea 1.0
When we finished implementing the first version of Hydrangea, we decided that it did not do enough to qualify as a “1.0″ release, so we dubbed it “Beta1″ and identified a new set of features and functionality that we will implement over the coming months for release as Hydrangea 1.0. We are aiming to post a Release Candidate version of Hydrangea 1.0 in early October.
All of the new functionality planned for Hydrangea 1.0 is currently recorded in the Hydra Jira. Over the coming week, we will be assembling those tickets into Scoping Notes and Development Plan for Hydrangea 1.0.
HydraCamp 2010
MediaShelf will be hosting a Hydra / Blacklight training event October 4-8 in Minneapolis. For more information about the event or to register, please visit the HydraCamp 2010 Event Page.