Developer meeting April 2008
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Developer meetings > April 2008 meeting
The meeting was at 11am GMT, Monday 28 April 2008. We had 30 participants and we covered everything in around two hours.
- Recording of the meeting (password moodle). Apologies for the recording starting 20 minutes into the meeting ;-)
Meeting notes finished soon!
Moodle 1.9
- Changes made to 1.9 stable since release
- Martin described 1.9 as a really good release, worth the bugathon time spent, and that Moodle HQ have spent a lot of time bug-fixing. Petr summarised many of the recent bug fixes:
- Gradebook - bug fixing and performance problems solved
- Captcha support added by Nicolas C
- Backup/restore bug fixing, improvements and performance
- Numerous PostgreSQL compatibility fixes
- Many critical problems fixed in language packs
- Front page participants list improved
- Database module - bug fixing and improvements
- Forum module - fixed unread tracking, performance improvements, group modes fixed
- Resource module - fixed problems with pdfs in IE
- Martin talked about the weekly build available on the downloads page, created 2AM GMT on Wednesdays, and about Moodle HQ and others (especially Dan - thanks!) testing bug fixes from the previous week, looking for regressions. Developers should avoid checking in core code on Tuesdays. More help testing bug fixes would be appreciated!
- Potential candidates for inclusion into 1.9.x
- Petr described a number of possible features:
- Group self selection module - MDL-1310 (Petr coding, Helen usability and documentation), first draft now available in contrib
- Andrea B asked whether automatic group creation could be expanded to make use of user profile fields e.g. city or country or custom fields. Martin replied that it was a good idea and it should be added to the tracker.
- User suspend, delete and purge improvements - MDL-13563 (Petr)
- Email change confirmation - MDL-13811 (Nicolas)
- Ajax in gradebook (Nicolas)
- Role-related improvements - MDL-8524 including MDL-13538, MDL-11421, MDL-7859 (Petr)
- WebDAV in moddata (Martín)
- Privacy laws related issues
- My Moodle page bug fixing and performance improvements (Jenny and Petr)
- Xinha HTML editor (Mauno)
- Tim queried whether these changes should be made in a stable branch, to which Martin responded that Moodle 2.0 is a long way off and that the changes are relatively small. Martin requested that people use the tracker for commenting and/or voting on these issues.
Moodle 2.0
Martin gave an overview of the current Roadmap:
- Moodle 2.0 will require PHP 5.2 as a minimum, allowing us to clean up the code in some areas - see gophp5.org
- File handling improvements - Moodle.com
- Files will have IDs, virtual directory structure
- File API - maintains an internal repository of files and governs access to them
- Repository API - allows users to browse external repositories and select files to bring into Moodle
- When you select a file it will be copied into Moodle, full control of security of every file
- Portfolio API - allows Moodle content to be captured and pushed out to external repositories
- Penny is going to be working on the portfolio API. Penny has worked on Mahara previously.
- Conditional activities - Moodle.com
- Allowing dependencies and forced paths through activities: ie "You can't do this thing until that thing is completed".
- This needs to be implemented so that performance doesn't suffer.
- Sam Marshall mentioned that the OU are going to implement conditional activities, though it's not yet official.
- Learner plans and competencies - Moodle.com and Google Summer of Code
- Builds on 1.9 support for outcomes so that individuals can have learning plans which are updated when courses are completed.
- Replaces our ageing HTMLarea with a new one that works on more browsers, enforces XHTML strict and better integrates with the new File API
- We should have one very well integrated editor, rather than offering a variety, tinyMCE is best contender so far.
- Mathieu Petit-Clair is developing the HTML editor.
- Community hub interfaces - Moodle.com and others
- Makes it easy for users to find and navigate other systems and external Moodle repositories, leveraging the Moodle Network in various ways.
- Standard Web Services Layer - UPC and moodle.com
- Standard set of core API functions made available via SOAP and XML-RPC
- Help looking at this would be appreciated!
- Old DB install/upgrade system removed
- The deprecated system for installing or upgrading database entries used in Moodle < 1.7 will be completely removed, while supporting only the new XML based database scheme introduced in 1.7.
- MDL-6605 Database access is to be refactored so that: we can use prepared statements everywhere for increased security and some performance, we put datalib functions in a class to allow better unit tests (mock db), and remove the need for slashes in userspace. This will cause breakage for 3rd party modules (but fixing them won't be too hard).
- Pagelib 2.0, Blocks 2.0
- refactor Blocks and Pages using contexts to allow blocks to go anywhere in Moodle with better control.
- Feedback module - Andreas Grabs
- Polished and included as a core module.
- New Wiki module (nwiki) - DFWikiteam-UPC
- To be cleaned up and included as a core module.
- Quiz report enhancements - The Open University
- Major improvements to the quiz reports, especially regrading and item analysis.
- Blog 2.0
- Add commenting to blogs (MDL-8776), as well as support for external blogs
- Messaging 2.0
- Refactor messaging to use plugins for input and output, controlled by users
- Secure RSS feeds
- Obscure RSS feed URLs using private keys, controlled by users.
- More tagging
- Tagging of courses, activities and other things
- AJAX for gradebook User Interfaces
- A host of UI improvements to enhance usability and speed
Other news
- New Moodle HQ employees (Martin)
- Google Summer of Code
- Helen described how Google are funding twelve projects this year (two more than last year) - see GSOC/2008 for a list. We had tons of applications and so were able to choose the very best students :-) Students will be following our common development process, beginning with creating a specification in Moodle Docs and then refining it based on community feedback. Coding is due to start from 26 May onwards. Let's help and encourage our new Moodle developers wherever we can!
- The OU blog (Sam Marshall)
- Webservices Architecture and other interoperability developments. (Ludo - Marc Alier)
- The phpdoc service for Moodle and how to enhance code documentation - (Valery)
- Global search working status and foresight - (Valery)
- The next developer meeting
- Helen informed everyone that the next developer meeting will be the Developer Hackfest on Monday 9th June, prior to the San Francisco 2008 MoodleMoot. Hopefully lots of developers will be able to attend in person, though we will be using Elluminate to provide remote access.
