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2021-11-24

• [analysis] (Nathan Sprenkle) Internally-routed XBlock handler calls

  • I wrote a function for calling XBlock handlers from inside edx-platform for a backend-for-frontend application. This is half [inform] and half [let me know if this is a “Really Bad Idea or Not™”].

  • See github edx/edx-platform/lms/djangoapps/ora_staff_grader/utils.py#L43

  • Ask OpenCraft about other ways/options for doing it?

• [Ned] Meta-question: are there any more questions or discussion following on from the Eng All-Hands?

  • Should we be planning for more repo changes programmatically?  How will 2U people be able to make changes to things like branch permissions?

    • Kyle is working on it, he might use https://registry.terraform.io/providers/integrations/github/latest 

    • For now, people who have admin will keep admin.

  • What’s happening to BD projects?

    • Some are moving to TCRIL, others are staying with edX

• [question] (Jeremy) If you could nominate 1-2 things to improve the experience for new Open edX developers, what would they be?  (We’ll likely have many such people soon.)

  • [dkh] We should pick up the thread of the onboarding work Feanil recently did

  • [djoy] Better/updated seed data for freshly provisioned devstacks/services

  • [djoy] push button environment creation and simple installation/setup instructions and documentation

  • [adam] Make things more consistent (devstack vs sandboxes vs prod, bokchoy vs cypress)

  • [andy] tests that work outside of a devstack shell

  • [andy] devstack as cattle not as pet

  • [andy] meta improvement: measure time lost to devstack to motivate investment

  • [djoy] is there a third party libraries-so-popular-they're-standards development environment stack that we could adopt so that someone else maintains our development stack for us, effectively. (this is clearly not a small thing)

• [Ned] Can TCRIL participate here?

  • Probably, let’s enable that

• [Adam] question: Is there anything stopping us from moving https://build.testeng.edx.org/job/edx-e2e-tests/ to the new tools-automation cluster?

  • Sub question, if someone changes something in a repo that will break an e2e test how can we make it faster to fix the test?

    • David Joy: Maybe a GHA?

    • Diana: Or maybe we can just remove the tests that trip us up

    • David Joy: e2e tests should be few and far in between, so we should only use them for critical path tests.

2021-11-03

• ++[analysis] (Dave O): Extracting a low-level learning core out of edx-platform and into a new repo.

  • (Original post/thread).

  • Motivation:

    • Create a smaller/simpler dependency to build extensions on top of (instead of edx-platform). This means smaller, more stable APIs that can add incremental value, instead of the backloaded benefits of removing stuff from edx-platform.

    • Promote innovation by making it easier to create different experiences on top of Open edX (like LabXchange).

    • Advance the Studio/LMS split (these would be the core of the LMS).

  • Some potential apps: publishing, navigation, policy, composition (what’s in a Unit for this user?), scheduling, partitioning (what users are in what groups for various tests).

  • Strategy for dealing with tricky extractions: Core data models and frameworks exist in new repo. Plugins are implemented in edx-platform. Examples:

    • For navigation, an outline processor framework exist in new repo, but an EnrollmentOutlineProcessor exists in edx-platform, keeping knowledge of enrollments out of the new core.

    • For partitioning, the data models to store user/partition mappings live in the new core, but actual partition bucketing logic remains implemented in edx-platform.

  • Strategy for data migration: Start with content data, that can be rebuilt/backfilled from Modulestore. We do this kind of thing all the time already.

  • Feedback:

    • Robert: In general, like the idea. Where to start: serving particular needs, like course overview-like data, verify that it serves the needs. Interfaces vs. implementations: do we need both? E.g. for course overviews, does it just need to move or will work need to be done–define an interface for a mocked version?

    • Jeremy: Any idea of things currently installed in edx-platform that directly call edx-platform–what are they doing?

      • Course overviews

      • Things that reach into modulestore for lack of better APIs that we should probably create

      • Scheduling

    • Jeremy: might it be worth identifying APIs in edx-platform that are the main code called by many other parts of the platform, so extracting it could allow all those to also be extracted?

      • There may be some cases where we move enough of the core of such an app (models, etc.) to a separate repo, but leave all the tangled implementation details in place to minimize the up-front work needed.

• + [quest] (Jeremy) Docker Desktop changes - how does this influence build vs. buy decisions?

  • Docker is starting to charge for Docker Desktop usage for orgs like ours

  • There are possible alternatives like Minikube, but we haven’t really evaluated how well they would work for us

  • Quite possibly worth edX paying for this, not as clear for Open edX at large

  • Jeremy discussed this with Régis; we agreed it needs to be discussed/resolved, but didn’t come up with any immediate answers

  • BTR working group at large hasn’t discussed this yet

  • Does moving to Codespaces or something similar change this

  • Costs ~$21/user/month for 50+ user orgs

  • Open edX will probably support multiple options in the future, but edX is likely to pick a default for its own developers

  • Probably just paying the license fee for now, to free up resources for acquisition-related stuff

•  Has anyone tried Tutor or Codespaces?

  • Tutor: https://docs.tutor.overhang.io/run.html , written by Régis Behmo

  • Codespaces, etc.: sounds cool, nobody’s had time to look at it very closely

    • Quicker to get started (and to restart!)

    • Internet speed: are codespaces better or worse than downloading docker images for poor internet speed?

      • Codespaces are latency, docker images are bandwidth

    • Doesn’t work at all offline, but that may not really be an issue for most people these days

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