News / 20 January 2026

iRODS Development Update: January 2026


Happy new year!

It's time for the first development update of 2026, starting with a reminder that we've posted internship opportunities for this summer.

For the server, support for physical quotas (a.k.a. resource quotas) continues to improve. We've merged work into the main branch which extends support for physical quotas to coordinating resources. Incorrect assumptions in the implementation of physical quotas have been fixed and copying over existing data objects now update the mtime as expected. msiDataObjPut and osauth have been marked as deprecated for the upcoming 4.3.5 release. Tools for special collections (e.g. imcoll, ibun) are scheduled for deprecation as well.

Policy Composition is getting closer to a release. There are currently two repositories which make up the project. The current tasks include combining the repositories to simplify maintenance and removing code which tracks access time through the use of metadata.

Notable updates include automated linting/testing via GitHub Actions for the Python iRODS client and various iRODS plugins.

Thanks for reading.

January Technology Working Group

  • Imaging Working Group

    • working on an OMERO integration
    • working meeting
      • Thur, January 15, 2026, 10am ET

  • Authentication Working Group

    • working meeting
      • Tues, January 27, 2026, 10am ET

  • S3 Working Group

    • working meeting
      • Fri, February 6, 2026, 3pm ET

  • TRiRODS

    • Wed, February 11, 2025, 4pm ET
    • TBD

  • 4.3.5

    • 49 bugs / 65 open, 96 closed

  • 5.1.0

    • 26 bugs / 243 open, 26 closed

  • New Development Work

    • posted internship opportunities for summer
      • https://irods.org/2026/01/irods-internship-summer-2026/

  • Active Development Work

    • iRODS Server

      • merged physical quotas work for coordinating resources into main branch
      • fixed incorrect assumptions in physical quotas implementation
      • copying over an existing data object updates its mtime
      • deprecated msiDataObjPut and osauth auth scheme
      • tools for special collections are scheduled for deprecation
        • imcoll, ibun, and related APIs

    • Policy Composition

      • https://github.com/irods/irods_rule_engine_plugins_policy
      • planning to combine the repositories for maintainability
      • planning to remove the access time policy engine
      • reviewing and updating documentation
      • preparing initial release

    • Python iRODS Client (PRC)

      • reviewing bug and enhancement issues for upcoming 3.3.0 release
      • working on automated linting via GitHub Actions

    • Automated Ingest Capability

      • added automated testing via GitHub Actions

    • Cyberduck

      • addressed all review comments from Cyberduck team
        • https://github.com/korydraughn/cyberduck/tree/jargon_to_irods4j
        • expected to be merged soon
      • finished new general purpose iRODS profile to Cyberduck profiles repository
        • https://github.com/iterate-ch/profiles/pull/163
      • updating documentation
      • will require a minimum server version of iRODS 4.3.2

  • Background Items

    • S3 Resource Plugin

      • last updated: December 2025
      • investigating adding support for CRC64/NVME trailing checksum on upload

    • irods4j

      • last updated: December 2025
      • released 0.6.0
        • https://github.com/irods/irods4j/releases/tag/0.6.0
        • added support for JSSE TrustManagers
        • added automated testing via GitHub Actions

    • Globus Connector

      • last updated: November 2025
      • released 5.0.1
      • improving buildsystem
        • consistency sweep, reorganization, and housekeeping

    • iRODS S3 API

      • last updated: November 2025
      • released 0.5.0
        • added plugin architecture for bucket mapping and user mapping
        • mappings are defined outside of main configuration file
        • auto-reloads mappings without server restart

    • Metalnx

      • last updated: November 2025
      • released 3.1.1

    • Python Rule Engine Plugin

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1

    • Audit AMQP Plugin

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1

    • Indexing Capability

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1

    • Metadata Guard

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1
      • planning to absorb into the server

    • Logical Quotas

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1
      • planning to absorb into the server

    • CURL microservices

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1
      • may be absorbed into the server

    • Unified Storage Tiering Capability

      • last updated: October 2025
      • released 5.0.1

    • Build and Packaging

      • last updated: October 2025
      • migrated apt repo setup instructions from apt-key

    • Docker-based Testing Environment

      • last updated: October 2025
      • added support for unattended installation

    • iRODS HTTP API

      • last update: October 2025
      • released 0.6.0
      • adding support for quota system
      • adding support for extending lifetime of basic-auth bearer tokens

    • Docker-based Development Environment

      • last update: August 2025
      • genericizing EL Dockerfiles

    • Zone Management Tool

      • last update: August 2025
      • released 0.4.1
        • intern has resolved build failures

    • Jargon

      • last update: August 2025
      • updated to support change in rcGeneralAdmin for adding groups in iRODS 4.3.4+

    • PAM Interactive Authentication Plugin

      • last update: May 2025
      • released 0.1.2

    • idrop

      • last updated: October 2025
      • merged PR from contributor
        • updates application to use Jargon 4.3.7.0-RELEASE
        • https://github.com/irods-contrib/idrop/pull/139
        • enables compatibility with iRODS 4.3.4 and later

    • Mungefs

      • last update: April 2025
      • updating CMake policy requirements for newer versions of CMake
      • migrated externals package to use system-provided libarchive and ZeroMQ

    • CockroachDB Database Plugin

      • last update: September 2024
      • CRDB license has changed

    • NFSRODS

      • last update: May 2024
      • released 2.3.0

    • iRODS Kubernetes Testing Environment

      • last update: April 2024
      • v9 of the build and test infrastructure
      • can stand up iRODS Providers and Consumers
      • can run core tests
      • running in RENCI K8s cluster, but could run on any cluster

    • NetCDF microservices

      • last update: January 2024
      • released for 4.3.1
      • considering archiving this project in favor of other solutions
        • possible existing Python libraries are 'enough'

    • iRODS GenQuery2

      • last update: December 2023
      • packages for 4.2 and 4.3 can be built using the iRODS Development Environment
        • use the plugin builder images

    • iRODS Command Line Interface (CLI)

      • last update: September 2023
      • added support for many basic operations
        • ls, mv, tree, mkdir, get, put, cd, pwd, touch, etc
      • presented at UGM 2023

    • iRODS Password Booth

      • last update: February 2024
      • CherryPy web application, uses PRC to let users modify their own password

    • R client (rirods)

      • last update: September 2023
      • released 0.1.1
      • submitted and accepted to CRAN
      • new website - https://irods4r.org
      • presented at UGM 2023

    • Logical Locking

      • last update: August 2021
      • read-locks to be implemented

    • New RPC API framework

      • last update: July 2021
      • leverages design from Authentication Working Group
      • supports synchronous and asynchronous operations
      • refactored into parallel_collection_operation base class
        • supports pre/post operations and an object operation

    • Hard Links Rule Engine Plugin

      • last update: July 2021
      • awaiting more use cases before release

    • AWS S3 Lambda

      • last update: July 2020

    • Publishing Capability

      • last update: August 2020
      • needs more README
      • awaiting CI

    • Parallel Filesystem Integration

      • last update: March 2020
      • iRODS API plugin
      • have split BeeGFS and Lustre implementations into aggregator and listener
      • testing against known configurations

  • Discussion

Kory Draughn