Development:Czech Hackfest 2009 notes

Hackfest participants, if anything we discussed has been been missed out, please edit the page and add it!

Moodle 2.0

DB stuff

New development area in admin menu, new feature in db layer - db session
Use db for session information setting (on by default)
things which really need testing - sessions, large scale
migrating data from one db to another db server
development > experimental > database transfer
development > experimental > database export
to learn sql write stats code, write unit test to check if sql is correct
Development:DML functions, Migrating from 1.9 DB code to 2.0

Plugins

Every plugin should have support for install, upgrade, access etc
Complete list of plugin locations available
previously stuff was hardcoded, now cleaned up
After 2.0, work on integration with new moodle.org Plugins database to download/install via web GUI.
to do: work on lang pack part

File API

previously teachers moving, renaming files and linking them from everywhere e.g. backup and restore includes all course and site files just in case
can be lots of files in course files not used at all, people upload new version, same file put in lots of courses
2 character directory names
things which really need testing - copying of files during upgrade
need to warn admins in upgrade notes
no longer course files for teachers
in 2.0 file link will contain lots of info - path, file name
if teacher uploads new version of file, students immediately see new version
re draft files, previously editing files in place, no undo, when editing set of files copy of old files made, copied to draft area, after editing click save then option to submit or cancel / discard
no direct editing of files, done in separate area, instead of using course files, use file picker, save rubbish elsewhere
missing piece - management of personal files
interface needs optimizing
not yet done: quotas
editing activity content section ajaxy

Navigation

Needs to be a block
2 dimensions - context (site, course, activities) and page type (course-view, mod-quiz-view etc)
moodle theme changes, base class, page class
mod/quiz/lang - lang file in plugin folder (same for core and contrib)
mod/quiz/theme - theme file in plugin folder (same for core and contrib)
base theme as simple as possible, install theme will be different - nice-looking theme
no more standard red, blue etc, config options to change colours instead, easier to customize
2.0 themes should have much better performance
should be easy to install new icon sets e.g. tango
sam going to convert/redevelop one theme for 2.0 then patrick to develop 20

Web services

See Development:Web services description
Enable web services in advanced settings Admin > Plugins > Web services

Roles

2.0 has admin tools for managing roles, but still difficult for sites with large numbers of users, looking at how other systems manage roles
For each capability, have allowed roles and prohibited roles (or even remove prohibited role column completely) - see http://skodak.org/blog/?p=29
Manager role without doanything capability, fixed admin role with doanything cap only
Changes in role archetypes,changes in role enrolments, so students assigned site-wide and enrolments separate
No changes in DB or API only internal

Enrolments

See Development:Enrolment rewrite and role tweaks proposal (written in March 2009)

Currently enrolment data stored in the enrolments table, guest access + passwords cause problems in 1.8, 1.9, can't disable built-in features such as guest access
How to improve performance and improve plugins?
Need instances of enrolment plugins in each course e.g. paypal instances in same course each with different cost
Course password (enrolment key) separate for guests and students, settings e.g. course cost kept in enrolment plugin, each course only has plugins which are enabled
Suggestion - change course settings page, perhaps have enrolments as separate link in course admin block
Question: should enrolment plugins work in different contexts - course, category?

Site-wide groups

See Development:Site-wide groups

Backup and restore

See Development:Backup 2.0

Gradebook 2.0

Grade settings provided by gradelib like groups settings on mod_edit.php

Gradinglib also needs to provide more of the grading interfaces that modules use in their grading interfaces, such as ratings.

Separate ratings API (like comments) ratingslib.php ratings table, and ratings parameters on the course_modules table

Also, to deal with gradebook hiding issues:

Hiding of grades only applies to user report. Conditional activities and grader report always should show them.
Add one option to only aggregate visible items (or not).

Languages

See Development:Languages and Development talk:Languages

Testing

QA testing

Moodle 2.0 QA testing
Tracker project, MDLQA, one bug for each release, subtasks for every feature/piece of functionality (up to 10 steps)
Workflow – passed, failed, obsolete
If a test fails, link to MDL issue
Dual purpose – list of features/functions defines what Moodle is, page Features out-of date and not maintained, whereas new lists Category:Functional testing will list all Moodle features
Ask Moodle community to help test before release, testers group to sign things off
Before Moodle 2.0 is released, 100% tests passed
Duplicate for Moodle 2.1, reset, add new stuff for 2.1
QA/functional testing to be run after beta version, if a developer makes changes to a module which has chance of regression they should go and reset the QA tests for the module
To do: document QA testing process, rewrite Tuesday testing process, review members of testers group (group can be the same for QA testing and Tuesday testing), asking people to confirm whether they wish to remain in the testers group

Unit testing

Site admin > Development > Unit testing
Currently using simple test, but not designed for php5
Aim to encourage people, including contrib devs, to write unit tests

Summary:

Looking to move to PHPUnit before Moodle 2.0 (Sam H to work on spec for converting to PHPUnit and post in Gen Dev forum)
Looking at implementing phpUnderControl (Jordan)
Will look at reimplementing fake db during the 2.0 beta period

Performance and cron

Build smoketest server to do daily performance tests on CVS code

Measure: CPU time, RAM use With Caches on/off

User stories for performance measurement

user logs in and views the front page
open MyMoodle page with 20 courses
attempting a quiz
posting to a forum

With Site types

Many courses, Many users
Many courses, Few users
Few courses, Many users
Few courses, Few users
Lots of quizzes
Lots of Scorm packages

Ideas for performance improvement

Cache capabilities for guests
Shared memory for capabilities
LANGROOT and THEMEROOT for storing downloadable packs separately from normal DATAROOT (and not over network, for example).
User picture icons, better caching control
log archiving
storing session table in alternate database (perhaps via a session storage plugin mechanism)
Oracle is evil!

See also Development:Scheduled Tasks Proposal about cron

Editors

See Development:Text formats

My Moodle

dashboard pages

/my/index.php
only users can see their own
users can customize freely
users can add their own pages
link to page for changing settings (in settings block)
admin can define default blocks that users can remove

public profile pages

/user/profile.php
everyone can see everyone's
admin can define blocks that are always seen
users cannot delete these blocks
users can add new blocks (if they have the capability)

course profile

/user/view.php
picture, description, general information, private information (only displayed to teachers)
link to full public profile
controlled by code (no editing by any users)

Use navigation block rather than tabs

Hubert Chathi to develop MyMoodle

Workshop module

Provides options for peer and self assessment, different grading strategies
Fields for introduction, instructions for submitting, instructions for assessing
Planner tool with current workshop phase highlighted
Phases: setup, submission, assessment, grading evaluation, closed
Assessment form with grade and comment for each aspect
Submissions may be allocated manually or randomly
Capabilities to allow students to view names of submission authors and view names of reviewers
2 grades for each student in gradebook for submission and assessment, may be aggregated as desired
To do: migration code, example submissions support, user interface improvements, review of lang strings and help files

Wiki module

Latest code from Ludo, module on right track, though still needs quite a bit of work
Wiki history code taken/reused from OU wiki
To do: text formats, comments API, grading, lang strings review
Also look into reducing the number of wiki-specific blocks (currently 6) to one or none

Feedback vs Questionnaire

Both of these modules are still popular. Questionnaire is the most-downloaded 3rd party module we have, and Feedback was previously selected as a "standard" module and so is also heavily used by people expecting an upgrade path.

For consistency we need to try and bring these users together in one upgrade path. The final result needs to support the features of both.

Feedback has problems

Andreas Grabs (the author) is not able to maintain it in future
There are some database structure issues that need to be fixed.
There are some interface issues and string issues needing to be fixed.

Questionnaire has problems

There are some database structure issues that need to be fixed.
There are some security issues that need to be fixed.
There are some cross-course features that need to be redesigned.

Survey has problems

People expect to be able to create their own surveys in it and are dissapointed when they can't. The existing survey instruments are powerful and translated into 70+ languages but under-used. Real shame because the pedgagogical benefits of using COLLES every week (for example) are huge.

What we will do for 2.0

Martin voted for Feedback to have necessary work done and go into 2.0, because people are crying out for a standard user-survey tool, and then be upgraded to a new super-Survey module in 2.1.

Almost everyone else at the hackfest disagreed and thought none of them should go into 2.0, so that we would avoid un-necessary maintenance headaches in future. Feedback and Questionnaire would continue in contrib.

Mike Churchward volunteered to come up with a proposal for a new version of Questionnaire that fixed the problems and also added all Feedback features, as well as templates that utilise lang strings so that we could merge Survey as well.

Martin would like that new module to be called Survey and replace the core Survey in 2.1, converting all existing questionnaire and feedback instances into "survey" instances. This would fix the awkward naming of these modules once and for all.

Documentation