Moodle 2.2 release notes

Release date: soon!

Major new features

• Rubrics (the first of our new Advanced grading methods)
• MDL-20534 IMS Learning Tools Interoperability
• MDL-29956 IMS Common Cartridge
• MDL-27622 MyMobile Theme
• MDL-21676 Gravatar integration

Other Highlights

• MDL-28455 TinyMCE editor upgraded. Safari on iPad/iPhone with iOS5 now works!
• MDL-27242 Conditional activities can now become available at an exact time, rather than only a date
• MDL-28646 Mobile apps can now download static offline copies of courses
• MDL-26477 Navigation block now links to topic/weekly sections
• MDL-28270 A variety of small improvements to cohorts
• MDL-29719 Course listings can now optionally display course short name everywhere
• MDL-27001 Activity descriptions can now be displayed on course pages

Security issues

To be released later

For developers: API changes

Core API changes

• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/lib/upgrade.txt
• MDL-29474 Plugins can declare that they depend on other plugins
• MDL-28554 Upgrade to YUI 3.4.0 and 2.9.0

New plugin types

• report - report_
• admin/tool - tool_
• mod/quiz/accessrule - quizaccess_

Plugin API changes

• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/auth/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/enrol/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/filter/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/mod/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/question/behaviour/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/question/format/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/question/type/upgrade.txt
• https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/theme/upgrade.txt

DB changes

• MDL-29313: Length limit for VARCHAR columns under all Databases has been raised to 1333 chars. This will allow using that column type to store URLs and longer contents in general.
• Specifically for Oracle installations:
  • MDL-29322: All VARCHAR2 columns will be created using CHAR semantics instead of default BYTE semantics in Moodle 2.2 and upwards. This provides better cross-db compatibility and improves storage of longer Unicode strings.
  • MDL-29416: For all existing sites, one new report has been added under Admin -> Development -> XMLDB Editor -> Check semantics, able to detect all the "old" BYTE semantics remaining in the database and generate the SQL statements needed to move them to proper CHAR semantics.

Libraries deleted from distribution

This is the list of some outdated / unused libraries that aren't bundled anymore with Moodle 2.2 and upwards. Any (contrib / custom) plugin using them should change to better alternatives or include its own copy of them:

• MDL-29884 - lib/base32.php
• MDL-29885 - lib/csshover.htc
• MDL-29886 - lib/md5.js
• MDL-29883 - lib/mp3player
• MDL-29671 - lib/odbc.php
• MDL-29882 - lib/overlib
• MDL-29914 - lib/pear/PHP/CodeSniffer
• MDL-29881 - lib/profilerlib.php and lib/pear/Console/Getopt
• MDL-29922 - lib/smarty (with the question format IMS QTI 2.0 also being removed - MDL-29921)
• MDL-29887 - lib/swfobject/swfobject.js

Webservice changes

MDL-20804 SOAP server can now publish detailed object structures via WSDL