2023-04-24 DevEx Meetup Notes

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Demos

Overview: rewriting static asset build for edx-platform to get rid of the python involved and have it all be front-end tooling
What does it mean to process static assets?

1. Build. Turn scss into css, run webpack

2. Collect. Copy all built assets to a folder

3. Watch. Run a daemon to look at built assets and rebuild if things change (only for dev env)

• Making the collection step simpler:

  • Previously, you had to use paver as a wrapper around the python management command. We moved the necessary configs into edx-platform so we don’t need paver. We can just run ./manage.py <cms/lms> collectstatic. Result: No more paver!

• Before: certain xblocks generated scss and we used those as input to the lms and studio scss. That meant there were intermingled stylesheets

  • Now: we write separate stylesheets that are included separately since xblocks are optional plugins

  • This is a step towards reimplementing the build without python

• Current: writing GH actions

  • Ideally, no one notices except maybe that something is faster

  • We don’t want to click through and look at every asset because literally no one has time for that

  • Instead: look at output processes from old and new. Generate sha1s for each created file, and compare the list of shas.

    • Still not a bad idea to spot check

    • based on an existing action that built all assets for every PR to make sure they were ok

• Q&A:

  • When you compare the diff, how do you know which file is which if the name has changed?

    • the name only changes for prod builds, not developer builds, so it’s easy to compare

Cross Pollination

• Tools/features/opportunities

• Tips and tricks

• Roadmap news

• @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated)

  • Momentum on metrics has slowed a bit. Need to look into Grafana and Prometheus, which would be more useful for the community than Okay anyway

    • Unclear how long we are willing to spend on this

• Connor

  • Spent a lot of time in edx-sandbox world (really would be much smoother if aligned more closely with tutor/community use), no improvements made, just challenges.

    • Notes:

      • Cycle time is very long.

      • Sandboxes are important for a lot of developer use cases, especially around QA

      • Opportunities for overcoming the many and varied challenges?

  • bind-mount has been hard to work on because of inertia required, but I do have a personal goal around it, and will be picking it back up soon.

• Kyle

  • I would really like to get sandboxes* going, but I don’t have time right now. Would anyone be interested in helping lead this? Farhaan from OpenCraft says that it should be pretty easy with Grove.

    • *sandboxes could mean several things:

      • pr sandboxes

      • reference environments to hook up to

      • feature sandboxes

    • Notes:

      • sandbox: small instance you can spin up to show off a feature

      • A lot of folks have their own versions, including 2u, OpenCraft, Axim

      • Grove is an OpenCraft tool for managing Open edX instances, and they already have a way to plug it into GitLab

      • question: who would be the host for PR sandboxes that come from the community?

        • Maybe Axim? There would have to be a cost analysis to figure out how many sandboxes Axim could support at any given time

        • Make it easy for providers to set up their own hosted sandboxes on their own infrastructure

      • there would be some overlap with hosted development environments

• Diana

  • Arch-BOM is going to start planning on developer data project soon

  • Notes:

    • Cloud-based dev work has been pushed to after dev data

    • Goal: import and modify development data easily for faster start up of development work

    • Arch BOM keeps getting sniped by event bus and weird upgrades

Challenges

• Each challenge should have a follow up action.

• If you have an idea for follow up actions, add it.

• Or if you aren’t sure, leave it blank.

• We’ll discuss all actions either way.

• @Rebecca Graber (Deactivated)

  • Metrics was supposed to be a very short thing but has spiraled. We’re trying to rein it in so we can move on to “real” devex things

• Kyle

  • How to make this meeting the best use of folks' time, especially people who live in different time zones.

  • Notes:

    • Targeted agenda items vs freestyle section

    • Section in template for “I would like to talk about this specific thing” that could be filled out beforehand?

    • What role should the discussion of this group’s roadmap or planned work?

      • “One of the ways to get people to stick around is to sign them up to do things”

      • Hopefully Arch BOM will be able to pivot to more devex work soon and have roadmaps to share

    • Keep recording meetings and taking notes. People like them!

    • Suggestion:

      • send out agenda earlier in the week to give people a chance to pre-populate items

      • keep on keepin' on

• Ghassan

  • Typically, when we cut the open release branch, there is a 2 month window before the release

  • There’s usually a lot of backporting in those 2 months

  • We could use GH actions to help automate the backporting process. Is this devex or BTR?

    • https://github.com/marketplace?type=&verification=&query=cherry-pick+

    • Suggestion: BTR

Successes

• DevExp wins!

• Kyle

  • Slow but steady progress on static assets, with help from Andrey from eduNEXT

    • collectstatic without Paver

    • decoupling xmodule styles from LMS/CMS styles

• Ghassan

  • Deploy Open edX instance using Mac mini (cost 599USD) and used as a DevEnv to lower cloudprovder cost

  • Notes:

    • Makes up cost of cloud provider in 10 months

    • Does require changing of local router to allow external traffic

    • Ghassan is writing a blog post

    • https://lms.zaat.dev

    • Question: do you use ngrok for dynamic ip tracking?

      • No because his ISP doesn’t allow dynamic ip with incoming traffic

      • Home rolled a tool to update the dns record every 5m

  • Relaeted Roadmoad issue: Open edX Light/Express (minimalist version of Open edX) · Issue #169 · openedx/platform-roadmap

    • Doen’t really solve it for production mode (I will write context in the issue above)

• Your Name

  • Your Item of Success to Share

Suggested Action Items

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https://github.com/openedx/wg-developer-experience/issues