Lilac has been released!

It’s been exactly 6 months since we released Koa, and (you guessed it!) Lilac is here! This is the twelfth Open edX community release, and it’s an exciting one:

Like Koa before it, Lilac was orchestrated by the Open edX community via the Build / Test / Release working group. For the first time, though, this release recommends an installation method that is entirely developed and maintained outside of edX: Tutor! Tutor joins the existing Native Installation as a fully supported install method, making for a simpler, more easily maintained deployment. It’s licensed under the AGPL v3, so it’s just as open as the Open edX Platform itself. Whether you’re just starting out or have been with us since Aspen, make sure to give it a try!

Because the Open edX community has been moving away from the toolset underlying the native installation, Lilac will be the last release using it. By the time Maple comes out this December, we expect to drop support for it altogether.

Beyond the installation, there have of course been significant improvements to Open edX itself:

  • There’s now finally a “Complete the course” button for learners to confirm if they’ve passed or completed a course.
  • The LTI consumer XBlock can now expose content via LTI 1.3.
  • And continuing the conversion to micro-frontends, more of them are enabled by default: notably, the ones that now render the account settings and checkout pages.

For the full list of changes including known issues, check out the Lilac Release Notes.

With this Open edX release, the previous one, Koa, is no longer supported. We encourage operators to upgrade to Lilac to continue receiving security fixes.

Many thanks to the Build / Test / Release working group and its community members for getting Lilac in shape. In particular,

And last but definitely not least,

  • @pdpinch for getting us release notes on the same day of the release!

Tired of reading and want to check Lilac out, already? We got you covered: feel free to choose from a fully managed deployment or to install it yourself.

If you have questions, the Ops Help category is a good place to start.

25 Likes

I want to chime in here about how great it is to see the community working group continuing to grow in responsibility for these releases.

And a huge thanks to @arbrandes for capably (and cheerfully) getting us all across the finish line on time!

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It’s really a marvelous thing, to see so many folks work together on this. Achieving this 6 month schedule is a major accomplishment, and will have a really positive impact on our ability to deliver the best possible learning experience.

6 Likes