Git Based Courses

Talk for Open edX Conference by Peter Pinch and Carson Gee

Transcript

1. Git-based Courses Carson Gee and Peter Pinch @carsongee & @pdpinch 1 / 30
2. Peter Pinch education at scale pbs.org, pbslearningmedia.org Ask me about animatronic aardvarks MIT OpenCourseWare 2,240 courses and counting man of many hats at MITx 2 / 30
3. Carson Gee Seriously into process automation Over a year with Open edX Over 100 PRs between platform and configuration Not serious about much else 3 / 30
4. Git Course Flow Overview 4 / 30
5. What We'll Cover Course Production Workflow How to make it go (tech details) 5 / 30
6. Why do we do it this way? Course teams want to: use familiar tools migrate content manage versions manage multiple contributors preview and release 6 / 30
7. Why do we do it this way? Admins need to: help course teams, safely bulk updates move courses from staging to production archive (and restore) courses 7 / 30
8. XML Course Development 8 / 30
9. XML Course Development 1. edit XML 2. commit and push to master branch 3. trigger ➞ updates course on staging server 4. review on staging, repeat as necessary 5. merge to live branch 6. trigger ➞ updates course on production server 9 / 30
10. example commit graph 10 / 30
11. example PR with comments 11 / 30
12. Studio Course Development 12 / 30
13. Studio Course Development 1. author course on studio server 2. review on staging server, repeat 3. export to Git 4. trigger ➞ updates course on production server 13 / 30
14. Technical Implementation Course Import and Export via Git Workflow Automation 14 / 30
15. Git Course Import via Command s u d o s u - e d x a p p - s / b i n / b a s h . e d x a p p _ e n v m k d i r / e d x / v a r / e d x a p p / c o u r s e _ r e p o s p y t h o n e d x - p l a t f o r m / m a n a g e . p y l m s - - s e t t i n g s = a w s \ g i t _ a d d _ c o u r s e h t t p : / / g i t h u b . c o m / e d x / e d x - d e m o - c o u r s e Options Directory to check out into Branch to use 15 / 30
16. Sysadmin Dashboard Import Enable with: E N A B L E _ S Y S A D M I N _ D A S H B O A R D = T r u e flag in F E A T U R E S dict Head to: h t t p s : / / < y o u r _ i n s t a n c e > / s y s a d m i n with global staff privs 16 / 30
17. Sysadmin Dashboard Import 17 / 30
18. Sysadmin Dashboard Import 18 / 30
19. Git Course Export via Command s u d o s u - e d x a p p - s / b i n / b a s h . e d x a p p _ e n v m k d i r / e d x / v a r / e d x a p p / e x p o r t _ c o u r s e _ r e p o s c d e d x - p l a t f o r m p y t h o n m a n a g e . p y c m s - - s e t t i n g s = a w s \ g i t _ e x p o r t e d X / D e m o X / D e m o _ C o u r s e \ g i t @ g i t h u b . c o m : c a r s o n g e e / e d x - d e m o - c o u r s e . g i t Options username (for commit authorship) repo_dir (specify location of local repo location) 19 / 30
20. Export to Git in Studio Enable with: E N A B L E _ E X P O R T _ G I T = T r u e flag in F E A T U R E S dict Set g i t u r l in course's advanced settings 20 / 30
21. Export to Git in Studio 21 / 30
22. Workflow Automation Enter gitreload: https://github.com/mitodl/gitreload Responds to hooks from github/gitlab Runs g i t _ a d d _ c o u r s e from hookshot Only operates on courses already checked out 22 / 30
23. Installing gitreload Try before you buy: s u d o s u - e d x a p p - s / b i n / b a s h . e d x a p p _ e n v p i p i n s t a l l g i t r e l o a d g i t r e l o a d Install for realsies with Ansible: - h o s t s : a l l s u d o : T r u e v a r s : C O M M O N _ E N A B L E _ B A S I C _ A U T H : T r u e r o l e s : - g i t r e l o a d - r o l e : n g i n x n g i n x _ s i t e s : - g i t r e l o a d 23 / 30
24. Add the Hook 24 / 30
25. Who needs ContentStore? Setup shared filesystem for course storage Symlink to: { { e d x a p p _ d a t a _ d i r } } / c o u r s e _ s t a t i c Set G I T _ I M P O R T _ S T A T I C = F a l s e 25 / 30
26. Who needs ContentStore? Add to static nginx server rule: l o c a t i o n ~ ^ / s t a t i c / ( ? P < f i l e > . * ) { r o o t { { e d x a p p _ d a t a _ d i r } } ; t r y _ f i l e s / s t a t i c f i l e s / $ f i l e / c o u r s e _ s t a t i c / $ f i l e = 4 0 4 ; Changes to: l o c a t i o n ~ / s t a t i c / ( ( ? P < d i r > [ ^ / ] + ) / ( ? P < f i l e > . * ) | ( ? P < r f i l e > [ \ w \ d \ - . ] + ) ) { r o o t { { e d x a p p _ a p p _ d i r } } ; t r y _ f i l e s / s t a t i c f i l e s / $ d i r / $ f i l e / c o u r s e _ s t a t i c / $ d i r / s t a t i c / $ f i l e / s t a t i c f i l e s / $ r f i l e = 4 0 4 ; 26 / 30
27. Conclusions The Good Simple and safe to publish to students Social course development w/ github Versioned per course backups gratis Support of multiple student LMS targets Better courseware debugging 27 / 30
28. Conclusions The Bad More complex setup git hooks repository creation manual first checkout Extra step for Studio courses Did the hook work? Easier to break courses when editing raw XML 28 / 30
29. Future Work Create RESTful token auth Course Import/Export API Studio and LMS "Create a Course" Application Automatic course/repo creation Initial LMS import Hook setup "giturl" setting 29 / 30
30. Questions? mitodl/git-based-courses-slides 30 / 30