Navigating the Vagrant Stacks of edX

I’ll be giving a demo and overview of running the edX platform locally with some helpful tips for getting productive. I’ll be covering the devstack, fullstack, and mitxstack virtual machine images with the intention of describing which hammer is better for which nail and how not to hit your thumb too much.

Transcript

1. Navigating the Vagrant Stacks of edX Watch out for dragons
2. About Me !   Working with edX for over a year from the outside !   Into automation – like really into automation !   Cultivator of Web farms !   No seriously – automate everything
3. edX Application Arch
4. Stac-Man
5. Folder Structure
6. What Stack for What: DevStack ! DevStack !   Core platform development (or forums, or xqueue) !   Testing environment setup !   Use your own tools !   Development server and debug tools ready
7. What Stack for What: FullStack ! FullStack !   Debug Courseware on edX.org ! MITxStack !   Built on FullStack !   Support local course development !   Fast course loading !   MITx configuration and theme !   Pinned by default to code running MITx Production
8. DevStack Docs and Demo ! https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/edX- Developer-Stack ! https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/Developing-on- the-edX-Developer-Stack ! https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/Test- engineering-FAQ ! http://userdocs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/pavelib.html
9. DevStack Gotchas !   Some things don’t work like they do in production: notably static assets !   MIT VPN client wreaks havoc on network/shared drive !   Mac sleeping causes slowness on shared drive ! MongoDB lock ! sudo rm /edx/var/mongo/mongodb/mongod.lock ! sudo /etc/init.d/mongodb restart !   Debug toolbar à MathJAX slowness: https://gist.github.com/carsongee/8bd342e426e5d05d4348
10. MITxStack Mocs and Memo ! https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/edx- Production-stack--installation-using-Vagrant-Virtualbox ! https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/edX- Managing-the-Production-Stack ! https://odl.mit.edu/wiki/Running_edX_Locally ! https://groups.google.com/d/forum/edx-code ! https://groups.google.com/d/forum/openedx-ops
11. MITxStack Gotchas !   Behind edX master branch by roughly a semester !   Enable/disable mongo static ! Symlinks don’t work like you probably want !   Debugging is a little harder since you only get info or higher (except on course import)
12. Questions? !   Feel free to ask me questions after this via e-mail, HipChat, Jabber, Carrier Pigeon, etc. ! edX-Code List