Deprecation/Removal: Deployment of Blockstore as an independent service

kmccormick · October 27, 2023, 9:10pm

Hi all.

We plan to remove the ability to operate Blockstore as an independently-deployable application (IDA, a.k.a. micro-service).

Blockstore will continue to be actively maintained as an installable Python package, and will continue to be available to CMS code in edx-platform.

For more info, please read and feel free to express any questions/comments/concerns on:

github.com/openedx/blockstore

[DEPR]: Deployment of Blockstore as an independent service

opened 09:04PM - 27 Oct 23 UTC

kdmccormick

depr

### Proposal Date 2023-10-27 ### Target Ticket Acceptance Date 2023-11-…10 ### Earliest Open edX Named Release Without This Functionality Redwood ### Rationale It was decided three years ago that [Blockstore](https://github.com/openedx/blockstore/), an authoring-oriented storage backend, [makes more sense as an installable app than it does as an independently-deployable micro-service](https://github.com/openedx/blockstore/blob/master/decisions/0002-app-not-service.rst). Since then, it has been both possible to deploy it as a service _and_ install as an application, but this dual-capability comes at the high cost of [layers of wrapper APIs](https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/blob/master/openedx/core/lib/blockstore_api/methods.py), [mostly-dead caching code](https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/blob/master/openedx/core/djangoapps/content_libraries/libraries_index.py), [test suites that are 80% skipped](https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/blob/master/openedx/core/djangoapps/content_libraries/tests/test_content_libraries.py), and [complicated deployment instructions](https://github.com/openedx/blockstore/tree/master#current-status) leading to [superfluous tooling code](https://github.com/openedx/openedx-tutor-plugins/tree/main/plugins/tutor-contrib-blockstore-filesystem), ### Removal Things to remove (work-in-progress): * all devstack, docker, docker-compose configuration/tooling/documentation in the Blockstore repo * https://docs.openedx.org/projects/edx-platform/en/latest/references/featuretoggles.html#featuretoggle-blockstore.use_blockstore_app_api * content libraries indexing and related settings * from https://github.com/openedx/openedx-tutor-plugins/tree/main/plugins : either tutor-contrib-blockstore-minio or tutor-contrib-blockstore-filesystem (the removed plugin will be incorporated into default edx-platform configuration) * `@skips` on content_libraries tests, which currently rely on Blockstore running as a micro-service * https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/blob/master/openedx/core/lib/blockstore_api/methods.py * update blockstore's openedx.yaml so that it will not be tagged in Redwood+ * more to come... ### Replacement **Blockstore will continue to exist and be actively maintained as an installable Django app.** ### Deprecation No plans to mark deprecation. ### Migration We will not provide any migration instructions because we are not aware of anyone using Blockstore as a micro-service. *If we are wrong and you do run Blockstore as a micro-service*, please reach out and we can help you figure out how to merge your Blockstore database into your LMS/CMS database. ### Additional Info _No response_

The proposed deadline for comments before acceptance is 2023-11-10. Once the ticket is accepted, removal can happen at any time.

Thanks!
Kyle

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Deprecation/Removal: Deployment of Blockstore as an independent service

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