Early deployers: Consider overriding these Django settings to False

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(This is for operators running at or near edx-platform master. If you use named releases, you’ll see this info in the Teak release notes.)

Background

The Aximprovements team is in the process of extracting the platform’s original XBlocks from edx-platform into a separate repository: GitHub - openedx/xblocks-contrib . The resulting XBlocks will be drop-in parity replacements for the old XBlocks; ideally, site operators will not even notice the transition. As with any significant refactoring, though, there is a risk of regression. So, during development and rollout phase of these extracted blocks, each one has a boolean Django setting named USE_EXTRACTD_$foo_BLOCK:

  • When set to False, the original built-in edx-platform code will be used to render the block.
  • When set to True, the new extracted xblocks-contrib code will be used.

For example, see USE_EXTRACTED_WORD_CLOUD_BLOCK. When False, the built-in code is used; when True, the extracted code is used.

As of 19 March 2025, all of these settings default to False, as the extracted blocks are not yet production-ready. However, we may have some of these blocks production-ready as early as Thursday 3 April 2025, at which point we may begin flipping any prod-ready defaults to True (i.e., use extracted by default).

Action required

Early deployers can follow one of two strategies here:

  • Do nothing, and just continue consuming the default values for these flags. You can watch#cc-edx-platform to see exactly when the defaults change.
  • Pre-emptively override all of these Django settings to False. Then, at your preferred cadence, flip them to True. Here is the full list:
    • USE_EXTRACTED_WORD_CLOUD_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_ANNOTATABLE_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_POLL_QUESTION_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_LTI_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_HTML_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_DISCUSSION_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_PROBLEM_BLOCK
    • USE_EXTRACTED_VIDEO_BLOCK

Regardless of the strategy you take, the built-in blocks and these flags will eventually all be removed, likely before the Ulmo cutoff (Oct 2025).

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