Open edX Dogwood Release

Open edX Dogwood Release#

Tags: site operator

Warning

This release is unsupported.

The Open edX Platform Release Notes and the Open edX Platform Release Notes are the authoratative sources of information on all Open edX releases. It is strongly recommended to operate off the latest Open edX release at all points in time, as only the most recent release is community-supported.

See the Open edX Release Schedule for information on release dates and end-of-life support.

This section describes the Open edX Dogwood release. Note that edX no longer supports the Dogwood relesae.

Note

Now that the Open edX Eucalyptus release is available, edX no longer supports the Dogwood release.

What’s Included in Dogwood#

The Open edX Dogwood release contains several new features for learners, course teams, and developers. See the release notes for the Dogwood for more details.

What Is the Dogwood Git Tag?#

A Git tag identifies the version of Open edX code that is the Dogwood release. You can find the most up-to-date Git tag for the current Open edX release on Open edX Platform Release Notes.

The following Open edX Git repositories have the Dogwood Git tag.

  • edx-platform

  • configuration

  • cs_comments_service

  • xqueue

  • XBlock

  • notifier

  • edx-ora2

  • edx-documentation

  • edx-certificates

  • edx-analytics-data-api-client

  • edx-analytics-configuration

  • edx-analytics-dashboard

  • edx-analytics-data-api

  • edx-analytics-pipeline

Upgrading from Cypress to Dogwood#

You can upgrade an Open edX instance that is running the Cypress release to the Dogwood release. EdX provides the migrate.sh script if you have a simple Cypress installation and want to upgrade it automatically. If you have a more complex or customized installation, you may need to upgrade manually.

Automatic Upgrading#

The migrate.sh script is in the edX configuration repository on GitHub.

Note

The upgrade scripts provided are verified only for upgrading instances running the Cypress release. If you are running any other version of the Open edX Platform, the upgrade scripts might not work.

Caution

Before upgrading your Open edX instance, back up all data and configuration files. Then verify that you can restore your Open edX instance from the backup files.

On the computer or virtual machine that is running the Cypress release of Open edX, run the upgrade script for your type of installation.

  • For devstack, run ./migrate.sh -c devstack -t named-release/dogwood.

  • For fullstack, run ./migrate.sh -c fullstack -t named-release/dogwood.

You can find the most up-to-date Git tag for the current Open edX release on Open edX Platform Release Notes.

You can also run ./migrate.sh -h to see which other options the script accepts.

The script creates a temporary directory in which it upgrades Open edX, then cleans up extra files and directories when it finishes running.

After upgrading Open edX to the Dogwood release, start the LMS and Studio and verify that course content and data was migrated correctly.

Upgrade Process Overview#

This is an overview of what happens during an upgrade from Cypress to Dogwood. The migrate.sh script implements this process. You may need to understand this process if your installation is customized in some way, or if you need to diagnose problems during the upgrade.

Upgrading Cypress to Dogwood is more involved than most Open edX release upgrades.

  • Dogwood upgrades the Django framework from version 1.4 to 1.8, which changed the database migration tool from South to Django. When you upgrade from Cypress to Dogwood, it is important to take special care with the database migrations.

  • Dogwood upgrades Python from 2.7.3 to 2.7.10. This means virtualenvs have to be recreated.

The upgrade from Cypress to Dogwood includes these steps.

  1. Applies a forum migration described on the Open edX wiki to support teams discussion filtering.

  2. Updates edx-platform to the release-2015-11-09 tag. This is the last released version that used Django 1.4.

  3. Recreates the virtualenvs to use Python 2.7.10 instead of 2.7.3.

  4. Migrates the database. This makes the database current with the last 1.4 code.

  5. Uninstalls South so that it does not interfere with the new Django migrations.

  6. Updates edx-platform to the dogwood-first-18 tag. This is the first version of the code that used Django 1.8.

  7. Applies all the initial Django migrations. This gets your database ready to use the new Django 1.8 migration mechanism.

  8. Updates edx-platform to Dogwood.

  9. Runs Django database migrations.

  10. Runs two management commands to update records in the database: generate_course_overview and post_cohort_membership_fix.

  11. Runs the forum migration again. This step processes any discussion topics created during the running of the script.

Similar steps are followed to upgrade other repositories such as xqueue.

Upgrading to a Dogwood Point Release#

Occasionally, we release updates to Dogwood. The first of these is named Dogwood.1, then Dogwood.2, and so on. The steps differ based on your original installation method. You will need to know the name of the Dogwood tag you want to install, for example named-release/dogwood.2.

Upgrading a Vagrant Installation#

Devstack and Fullstack are installed using Vagrant. To upgrade to a Dogwood point release, follow these steps in the host operating system.

$ export OPENEDX_RELEASE={desired-dogwood-tag}
$ vagrant provision

Upgrading a Native Installation#

If you installed Open edX using the Open edX Native 12.04 Installation, re-run those steps using your desired Dogwood tag as the new value for OPENEDX_RELEASE.

Maintenance Chart

Review Date

Working Group Reviewer

Release

Test situation

2025-03-09

Sarina Canelake

Sumac

Fail - this release is unsupported
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