Contributors Meetup Async Update - August 5th, 2023 - August 18th, 2023

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Contributors meetup Async Update

August 5th, 2023 - August 18th, 2023

Welcome to our Core Contributors async update!

1. Working Groups Updates

Working Groups Calendar :calendar:

BTR Working Group

Contributor Coordination Working Group

Data Working Group

  • Chair: @e0d & @blarghmatey
  • Headlines:
    • Jenna is going to present the draft v1 reqs, compiled from community feedback and competitive analysis! Questions and discussion to follow. [DRAFT] Aspects V1: Product Requirements
    • Some quick updates on the state of Aspects, the delta between Beta and v1, and the remaining work for the initial Beta release.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

DEPR Working Group

DevEx Working Group

  • Chair: @Rebecca_S_Graber & @kmccormick
  • Headlines:
  • Tutor MFE dev performance improvements:
    • (Potential demo)
    • Only one MFE container in dev unless you bind-mount another MFE
    • Problem: it was difficult to run openedx in dev mode in Palm due to the number of MFEs. Each development MFE was running with npm run start which has hot reload, but slows down everything and eats the CPU
    • Solution: Run all MFEs using a static webserver like we do in prod, in a single container.
      • How to detect which MFEs still need hot reloading? The MFEs will be bind-mounted in.
      • For those MFEs, run a separate container that still runs npm run start
      • May require a rebuild since you’re also mounting node-modules
      • Was pretty easy to implement since we do run-time configuration for MFEs
      • MFE container listens to many different ports in development
  • Highlights:
    • Regis made many Dockerfile improvements which made things faster and more clear!
    • After Kyle’s work we are well on our way to making image building way faster, and it will get faster with all the frontend code we remove!
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

DevOps Working Group

Educators Working Group

Frontend Working Group

  • Chair: @arbrandes
  • Headlines:
  • Commit Lint failures with TypeScript aware repositories
    • Marlon Keating is making his first appearance, representing edX!
    • edX is working on enabling TypeScript support in frontend build. They are running into some issues.
    • Mostly it’s around testing, linting, and CI. There’s a bug in commitlint. If there is no tsconfig, it will fail. If a downstream repo does not want to use TypeScript, they will not have a typescript config and the build will fail.
    • They would like more PRs on the workarounds for this because some of them are messy, and they’d like to know if anyone else has run into it so far.
    • Can’t run commitlint on project with tsconfig.json · Issue #3256 · conventional-changelog/commitlint
  • New MFE for ORA: uses a potential pattern for complex XBlocks with an in-learning experience modal, with different views and with its own dependencies. This functionality was initially built for LTI, and avoids nested iframes, using just one and leveraging the messaging functionality of the XBlock API. An ADR will be in Frontend-app-ORA.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Large Instances Working Group

  • Chair: @braden & @felipe
  • Headlines:
  • What’s new with the deployment?
    • OpenCraft:
      • still working on when we can start the work to convert Grove to Harmony.
    • eduNEXT:
      • still working on the CDN work previously mentioned. We’re also looking into load testing with K6, and found some problems with Caddy. After a certain threshold it throws 502 errors. Indicates that for large clusters, we may need to make some changes. But we’re still investigating so it’s too early to say. It’s also sporadic.
      • we may be releasing our load testing scripts / benchmark tool if there’s interest, and potential for collaboration around that. It wouldn’t be part of harmony but still part of the large instances umbrella.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Marketing Working Group

  • Chair: Eden Huthmacher
  • Headlines:
    • LWMOOCs - small booth
    • Open edX meet up
      • Generative AI with 2 Axim employees, new CTO Philip Smith
    • Dedicated marketing page for MWG on Open edX website
    • Redesign the default platform footer
      • All Open edX sites should have a footer
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Maintainers

  • Headlines:
    • We need to converge on a plan for phase 3 rapidly. Ideally we could kick that off immediately.
      • react-unit-test-utils was bumped, per Slack convo from phase 2 to phase 3.
      • Based on other conversations about maintenance plans, we pulled edx-platform into phase 3. We’ll need to coordinate plans for supporting it with Jeremy Bowman
      • We also added frontend-app-learner-dashboard to phase 3 scope.
      • Edward Zarecor will coordinate pulling in all Aspects related repos to be maintained by Axim for phase 3.
    • Ned Batchelder will work with 2U maintainers to move repos from pending to confirmed as quickly as reasonable. He’ll come back with a proposed schedule for that.
    • Feanil Patel will write up an ADR on OEP-55 to propose that all new repos much come with a commitment to maintain them.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Product Working Group

  • Headlines:
    • Core Product: Strategy doc has gone through feedback loop with WG
    • Next steps: Open to community feedback, working session for Assessment Core capability
    • LTI: MVP focuses on configuration and reuse
    • Next steps: Proposal open for review
    • UX/UI:
  • Mobile: Approved new mobile applications as default future Open edX mobile applications. Draft of Open edX Mobile Product Vision / Direction is in review by the subgroup, with more work in the coming weeks to unpack this. Current development focus is on the Project - Learning Site Selection (FC-25a) capability to help providers build 1 iOS and 1 Android application for their clients and thus expand the use of the mobile applications for much lower cost than previously possible. Additionally, a funded contribution focused on updating mobile APIs is also in development.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Security Working Group

TOC

Translation Working Group

2. Events

The next Open edX meetup will take place on Thursday, September 7th at 10 AM (EDT) and will feature the social impact created by the Open edX Project to increase access to education for learners globally. You can learn more about the event and register here.

3. Projects

Would anyone like to highlight any new or ongoing projects?

4. Next async update and meetup

  • Friday September 1st - Update async!
  • Tuesday September 5th - Join the meetup here!
  • Details and draft agenda on the GitHub board

Please reply to this post with any questions or comments you may have!