Community dependency and maintenance for ruby-oai

[jrgriffiniii]

Currently, there are cases in which implementations of Hyrax which include within them a dependency upon oai for supporting OAI-PMH features (please see https://github.com/samvera/hyrax/issues/3328). Unfortunately, the Gem itself does not necessarily have a regularly-scheduled maintenance plan, and as such, supporting this Gem from the standpoint of enabling continued community adoption can become problematic.

While the original GitHub project was located on https://github.com/code4lib/ruby-oai, I have started to advance the process of looking towards community maintenance by forking this to https://github.com/samvera-labs/ruby-oai.

In order to promote this to a core component, the following criteria would need to be fulfilled:

Organizational

• Component has a designated product owner.
• A participant of the Core Component Maintenance Working Group must have a vested interest in the maintenance of that component, acting as a representative for their institution’s needs.

(Please see https://samvera.github.io/core_components.html#requirements-for-a-core-component)

Code Requirements

• Code must be released at version >= 1.0
• Good unit test coverage measured by community (e.g. 100% or 75% of what’s important)
• uses CI (Preferably CircleCI, unless there is a compelling reason to do something else)
• uses Coverage tool (coveralls or simplecov)
• Show compatibility with current Rails versions and other dependencies, when was it last tested; note compatibility with prior versions when available. Compatibility can be specified in the gemspec(s) or verified via CI matrix.
• Hierarchy of promises asserted in clearly defined acceptance tests

Documentation Requirements

• LICENSE file, Apache 2 (or compatible)
• README.md
• Statement of purpose
• Basic install steps
• Identify any volatile/experimental features
• How to contribute -> CONTRIBUTING.md
• How/Who to contact for help -> push out to all gems like CONTRIBUTING.md
• Known issues documented in github Issues tickets (not just listed in text)
• Tutorial / Walkthrough / Example usage
• Resolve TODO items in documents and remove them
• All Contributors should have signed Hydra Contibutor License Agreement (CLA)

Use Requirements

• Community use by three or more institutions
• In active use for six months
• Has an ongoing maintenance plan.

(Please see https://samvera.github.io/samvera_labs.html#guidelines-for-promotion-to-samvera-from-labs)

[jrgriffiniii]

I would please recommend that this also be used to charter a new Working Group, with the deliverables of aiming to have (at the least) a roadmap for releasing this as a core component as a deliverable.

[barmintor]

Do these institutions use the ruby-oai gem directly, or via the blacklight oai provider?

[barmintor]

I have to wonder whether the broader community here wouldn't be better served by just contributing to code4lib/ruby-oai?