Enable Comprehensive Theming – Devstack – Mako Template Overrides Not Working

Zachary_Trabookis · November 5, 2020, 4:22am

Issue
After enabling comprehensive theming on devstack_docker I was not able to successfully override a theme template file. CSS changes through Sass updates were working just fine.

I looked at Setup to develop a custom theme in devstack but it had no solution.

Solution
Details: https://openedx.slack.com/archives/C0G15M90X/p1604520587008500

For those having issues getting their comprehensive theming working for overridden template files uncomment these lines in lms/envs/devstack.py.

github.com

edx/edx-platform/blob/open-release/juniper.master/lms/envs/devstack.py#L388-L405


########################## THEMING  #######################
# If you want to enable theming in devstack, uncomment this section and add any relevant
# theme directories to COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS

# We have to import the private method here because production.py calls
# derive_settings('lms.envs.production') which runs _make_mako_template_dirs with
# the settings from production, which doesn't include these theming settings. Thus,
# the templating engine is unable to find the themed templates because they don't exist
# in it's path. Re-calling derive_settings doesn't work because the settings was already
# changed from a function to a list, and it can't be derived again.

# from .common import _make_mako_template_dirs
# ENABLE_COMPREHENSIVE_THEMING = True
# COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS = [
#     "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/themes/"
# ]
# TEMPLATES[1]["DIRS"] = _make_mako_template_dirs
# derive_settings(__name__)

The issue lies in adding the theme template directories to the Mako base templates with this assignment being the answer to how it works.
TEMPLATES[1]["DIRS"] = _make_mako_template_dirs

cc: @sambapete, @jill, @djoy, @Tuchfarber

wowkalucky · November 5, 2020, 8:51am

Yeah… that was new to me too. By the way, the same works for the Studio as well if you insert such snippet there.

Zachary_Trabookis · November 11, 2020, 9:45pm

@Tuchfarber @regis I added this pull request to include instructions on how to enable comprehensive theming for devstack. This hopefully will prevent issues with Mako template theme overrides from not working. If you can review this PR please do and make any recommended changes.

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Enable Comprehensive Theming – Devstack – Mako Template Overrides Not Working

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