Writing Open Source Software
David Kane
WIT Libraries
What is ‘Open Source’?
• Universal and free access to the design or
blueprint of a product, including all
subsequent improvements.
• A form of ‘Open Collaboration’ where a group
of loosely affiliated individuals work towards a
common goal.
What is ‘Open Source Software’?
• Universal and free access to the Source Code
of a program, including all subsequent
improvements.
• A form of ‘Open Collaboration’ where a group
of loosely affiliated individuals work towards a
common goal.
My Story
• Open Source Projects can be big and they can
be small. They all solve a problem though.
• I had a problem that needed to be solved.
The Problem
The Problem
Log In
Choose Type
Upload file(s)
Add Metadata
Add Subjects
Deposit
What I Wanted
Do it all on a single page
Deposit
Reaching Out
– SWORD
• Simple Web Service Offering Repository Deposit
– EasyDeposit (Last Release June ‘11)
•
•
•
•
An implementation of SWORD
Did not work in my case
Many files and folders
Not as simple as I wanted
Reaching Out
– Eprints Tech Mailing List (Feb 2013).
• Discussions on SWORD relating to ingest of various data
and file formats.
• Suggestions made by some to re-write some of the
code in EPrints itself.
– Got speaking to Tommy Ingulfsen of Caltech
• Similar Problem to our own.
• After a campus-wide upgrade and migration process,
their old SWORD interface no longer worked.
Sherman M. Fairchild Library
4,986 miles
Tommy Ingulfsen
cations Developer in Caltech Library
Tromsø in the Far North of Norway 69° North.
niversity in England
lifornia
Our Solution
HTML Form
• Fill in text
fields
• User/Pass
• Title, Author,
Abstract, etc.
• Upload File(s)
Eprints Helper
• Takes the data
and files, and
builds into a
single XML
package.
EPrints
• Authentication
of User
• Ingest XML
• Converts XML
to brand new
EPrint
https://github.com/davidfkane/eprintsDepositHelper/
Writing Open Source Software
David Kane
WIT Libraries
dkane@wit.ie