Open edX Contributors Meetup

Working Groups Contributor Coordination
73

This is the recap from the meeting on 2021-10-19.

Video Recording

Participants

@antoviaque
@BbrSofiane
@dave
@e0d
@Felipe
@ghassan
@idegtiarov
@pdpinch
@regis
@sarina

Topics discussed

Working group updates

  • Marketing — 00:14:09

    The marketing group is working on planning another virtual event, in December.

    There are plans to have an in-person event in Lisbon in the spring. Some additional confirmation is needed regarding, so this topic requires following up on.

  • Release — 00:01:30

    @regis and @nedbat branched Maple master :partying_face:
    This has been announced in the “git checkout open-release/maple.master” thread.

    At the moment, there is no rc.1 tag yet because during that time, it wasn’t possible for people to install the maple release.

    Since Tutor is now the relied method of installation for Open edX, the priority was to ensure Tutor was working with the latest maple master branch. A new branch has been created by @regis for testing.

    If you have any interests in contributing to Tutor or the release working group, please setup Maple using Tutor and report any issues you might to the BTR working group.

  • Frontend — 00:06:02

    Not much updates regarding the frontend working group were discussed during this meeting.

    The main points discussed were about reusable headers and footers, dropping IE11 support, and the Node 16 upgrade.

    More information can be found on “FWG Working Session Notes - 2021-10-19”.

  • Core Contributors — 00:08:02

    There weren’t many updates for this meetup.

    Core committers @arbrandes and @giovannicimolin now have access to the edx-platform, alongside their other repos. Congratulations! :partying_face:

    There are additional plans towards adding even more core committers, especially to the edx-platform repo. Moreover, there’s additional work being done towards adding non technical contributors in other areas than translations.

    Currently, non-technical contributors (NTC) in the UX and/or Product areas would be nice. @sarina is looking for candidates who might be interested in such non-technical core contributor roles. So if you are, please reach out!

Events

N/A

New or Ongoing projects

  • Upgrades — 00:17:25

    • Django 3.2 upgrade

      The Django 3.2 upgrade has been completed on time and included in the latest Maple master branch, as planned.

      The ecommerce application was not upgraded, but is being actively worked on at the moment. It is most likely going to take another month to complete.

      There is remaining important work for the Django 3.2 upgrade, however, it isn’t blocking. More information about the upgrade can be found in the “Django 3.2 Upgrade” GitHub project board.

    • MongoDB 4.2 Upgrade

      The MongoDB ugprade work has been completed.
      You can check the progress tracking page for more information.

    • ElasticSearch upgrade

      The ElasticSearch upgrade work has been completed.
      You can check the progress tracking page for more information.

    • Node.js 16

      The frontend working group is mainly working on that upgrade. It’s a less critical upgrade since it is related to build-time dependencies and will not be running on production systems.

  • MySQL instead of MongoDB — 00:28:40

    @dave will be proposing an ADR in order to better inform the community about the decision behind utilizing MySQL instead of MongoDB.

    There is no clear date as to when MongoDB would be removed, because of the following blockers:

    • Old mongo courses
    • Forums/Discussions service
    • Modulestore queries

    There are concerns regarding MongoDB being removed because it’s currently utilized by some clients for storage. Adjusting the django storage was a suggestion provided which resolve the concerns.

  • Django Backend APIs: Django Signal Events, Django Filters — 00:26:10

    The first batch of Open edX events and initial documentation pull requests were both merged.

    Django signal events can be used on Maple.

  • xAPI/Caliper, OEP-26 — 00:27:08

    No updates were shared regarding that.

    It seems like some community members are utilizing the xAPI implementation and reporting some issues they are facing.

  • Contributor t-shirt — 00:45:50

    According to @gabrieldamours’s latest update, a sample is on its way to him.

    This thread’s priority will be decreased, so if you’d like to keep up with all the updates happening, please check out the github issue.

  • DEPR impediments - any tickets that need real-time discussion? — 00:41:00

    • Entrance Exam - how can we remove this unsupported feature from the core?

      There are efforts being done to find a core contributor who can pick up the DEPR ticket, start discussions on the forum about different alternatives, and find a volunteer to contribute the alternative to the community.

      @omar will be discussing this ticket with his team to see if they can support an alternative solution for the entrance exam feature.

  • Dev Onboarding Courses — 00:47:10

    At the moment, there are no updates regarding the dev onboarding course.

    Unfortunately, at the moment @omar doesn’t have enough capacity to move forward with the dev onboarding course. However, @omar and his team are working on hiring someone who can dedicate a larger portion of their time to the community and the dev onboarding course.

    Accordingly, the work on the dev onboarding course has been paused for now.

    Also, @regis brought up an important point regarding adding instructions for utilizing Tutor in the dev onboarding course, alongside or instead of the devstack.

  • Contribution Course — 00:47:50

    • There are efforts for having the draft content ready by the end of the year.
    Work on the graphic and video assets is not expected to start before next year.

    Most of the contributors are volunteers. If you’re interested, in contributing, you can check the contribution guide. The next meeting for the Contribution Course is on Monday October 25 17:00 UTC. Everyone is free to attend.

  • Tech Radar — 00:54:30

    @sarina and @djoy are encouraging members of the community to review the tech radar blips’ positioning. It’s the last call for reviewers.

    The chance to review is expected to be closed by the 29th of October. So, if you have 5 mins to spare, give “Tech Radar Beta: Last Call for Reviewers!” a quick look.

  • Coffee Break Meetings — 00:55:45

    @idegtiarov is organizing a Coffee Break meeting for core contributors which will be hosted next week on Thursday October 28th. Currently, the time is still being discussed in a slack thread, but the expected times are 14:00 UTC, 16:00 UTC, and 17:00 UTC.

    The coffee break is intended for core contributors to get to know each other and talk freely.

    If you’re interested in attending, please be sure to join the #core-contributors slack channel to stay up-to-date with the latest updates regarding the Coffee Break.

More details, including the chat log, on this meeting’s agenda.

Next meetup

Tuesday November 2nd at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter).

Details and draft agenda on the Github board.

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