Tutor Analysis

Table of Contents

1 Overview

An evaluation was made in March 2021 of the readiness of Tutor as a potential replacement of the Open edX devstack.

• See https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/ARCHBOM-1670

At this time, Tutor has enough gaps that it is not yet ready. However, next steps were also documented.

2 Rubric

3 Steps for Local Dev

Tests were done with the version of Tutor in this pr: https://github.com/overhangio/tutor/pull/407

NOTE: Many steps will update the docker-compose.override.yml file. Here is what the final version looks like:

3.1 Steps for Setting up a branch version of Tutor

3.2 Setup to do edx-platform Dev

1. Setup for development per first section of https://docs.tutor.overhang.io/dev.html, summarized with the commands below:

   tutor local quickstart tutor local stop tutor images build openedx-dev

2. Override source code mounts to point to local edx-platform code by following instructions in this section: https://docs.tutor.overhang.io/dev.html#override-docker-compose-volumes

   • Note: See first line in each volumes section in example .yml file above.

3. Copy container’s venv to the host using the bindmount command.

4. Update docker-compose overrides file to mount the local venv into the container.

   Add a line like the following to the override file for each of the containers (lms, cms, lms-worker, cms-worker)

5. tutor dev run lms pip install -r requirements/edx/development.txt

6. tutor dev run lms ./manage.py lms migrate

7. tutor dev runserver lms

3.3 Adding Discovery

1. pip install tutor-discovery

2. tutor plugins enable discovery

3. Copy discovery container’s venv to the host using the bindmount command.

4. Update docker-compose.override.yml to add discovery service with local venv and discovery code.

3.4 Running with an MFE next to tutor

1. Download MFE

2. Update .env.development

   • Replace all occurances of localhost:18000 -> local.overhang.io:8000

   • Replace localhost:1997 -> local.overhang.io:1997

3. Run webpack server manually to set host to local.overhang.io.

4. Navigate to local.overhang.io:1997

4 Questions for Régis

• After I update tutor/templates/apps/openedx/settings/partials/pre_common_all.py how do I update my local tutor settings files?

• Why does the run command set permissions every time?

  • Should we be running exec instead?

• Why do we have to re-build the image between dev and test? https://docs.tutor.overhang.io/dev.html#running-edx-platform-unit-tests

  • Could there be a simpler workflow?

• Is setting up to test e2e something you're planning to do?

• If we want to change Django settings, is this where we should be using some existing hooks that we're not aware of?

• Why have your own Django settings files? Is this due to historic reasons?

5 Next Steps

• Talk to Régis about our open questions. Include Adolfo in conversation.

• Reevaluate in the future after some of the gaps have narrowed, or prioritize helping narrow the gaps. See the following notes on the current stance on various questions:

  • Should we replace devstack with tutor today? No.

  • Should we replace devstack with tutor someday? Maybe.

  • What's preventing us from doing it now?

    • Missing MFEs

      • Currently Tutor has no MFE plugins. We would need to build this.

    • Missing Backend Plugins

      • Credentials

      • Registrar

    • Out of date with Master for data layer services (mongo, es)

      • Example: Course discovery elasticsearch

      • This may be tricky to fix and would involve updating tutor's settings files and default images.

        • Replacing default images is already supported.

        • We may be able to use hooks to update settings which is the other thing that would be needed.

    • Not all Unit Test work for the LMS

    • Other various use cases that devstack currently supports and Tutor doesn't (not making a value judgement, just calling out for completeness.)

      • e2e testing

      • Generating Programs Data

      • No quick script to provision all plugins at once, each service/plugin is manage individually.

        • Missing a "do all the things" script is fine if we want the users to know and do each thing they want manually.

        • But missing the "do all the things" scirpt does increase the number of things a developer needs to know and do manually.

      • The option to run with NFS mounts