3. Juniper release notes: Developer Experiences#

3.1. Platform Services#

3.1.1. Notifier Service#

Notifier Service Deprecation: We made the decision to deprecate the notifier service powering the discussion forum daily digest feature. In the future we hope to find a maintainable path for this feature, perhaps using the edX ACE infrastructure.

3.2. Continuous Integration & Deployment#

3.2.1. Front End Pipeline#

Shared Frontend Platform Services: In support of centralized configuration of baseline micro-frontend requirements, we have created the Frontend Platform repository. As part of this work various services (previously also described as “runways”) were built to speed up configuration of analytics, logging, authentication, internationalization, as well as a set of other miscellaneous utilities and configuration details that affect all micro-frontends.

MFE Template Application: For new micro-frontends, you can start from the Frontend Template Application GitHub repository, a way to quickly spin up a new MFE using consistent tools and configuration details employed by other open edx platform MFEs. It is flagged as a template repository, meaning it can be used as a basis for new GitHub repositories via the “Use this Template” action.

MFE Service - Build: In order to standardize MFE configuration of styles, tests, and builds, a GitHub repository was created called Frontend Build to package as a single dev dependency. It aims to provide common sense defaults that should be good for most edX projects out of the box, but can be extended or overridden where needed.

MFE Service - Logging: In support of expanded use of micro-frontends, a foundational service focused on logging and reporting was built into the Frontend Platform repository, with an out-of-the-box concrete implementation for NewRelic.

MFE Service - Analytics: In support of expanded use of micro-frontends, a foundational service focused on eventing and analytics was built into the Frontend Platform repository, with an out-of-the-box concrete implementation for Segment.

3.2.2. Mobile Site Build Pipeline#

Mobile Test Automation Pipeline: A major investment was made into test automation tooling and containers for both the iOS and Android applications, enabling improved mobile app test suite automation and builds.

3.2.3. Authentication & Account Services#

MFE Service - Authentication: In support of expanded use of micro-frontends, a foundational service focused on configuring authentication access and maintaining JSON web tokens through to the MFE was built into the Frontend Platform repository.

Deprecation of Legacy Implementations: A number of legacy implementations and views to power login and registration pages on edX platform were cleaned up and removed in favor of a single secure implementation. Details are in the DEPR-52.

3.2.4. Internationalization Pipeline#

MFE Service - Internationalization: In support of expanded use of micro-frontends, a foundational service focused on internationalization support was built into the Frontend Platform repository. The goal of this service is to standardize the way micro-frontends reference and update their text strings from Transifex, our crowdsource platform text translation community.

3.2.5. Devstack#

3.2.6. Video Delivery Pipeline#

VEDA Performance Enhancements: The team put time into making key VEDA performance enhancements, improving stability and scaling of our video uploads pipeline. This includes changes to reduce and mitigate unexpected upload failures, scaling the system to adequately handle increased loads, and reducing the need to re-encode videos unexpectedly.

VEDA Deprecation Process: After the performance and stability improvements, the team next set its sights on building a new Video Encoding Manager (VEM) which will utilize AWS and Media Convert as a replacement for the existing VEDA video pipeline. This is not available today but we are flagging for Juniper that VEDA is marked for deprecation, and our next release should include more details about its replacement - VEM.

3.2.7. Accessibility Support#

WCAG 2.1 Enhancements: Across many areas of the platform we have completed improvements that move our platform’s target WCAG support level up to 2.1 from 2.0. Many areas of the platform have been updated to improve key requirements such as improved contrast and visibility, semantic page structure updates, as well as landmark container improvements that are all a part of the 2.1 specification.

3.3. Pattern Library & Components#

3.3.1. Paragon#

We have updated the Paragon Component Library. Paragon now includes Bootstrap SCSS directly and contains Paragon extensions. It should now be considered the Paragon Pattern Library. Theming for Paragon works the same as themes for Bootstrap and any Bootstrap-compatible theme should be compatible with Paragon. This was done to help streamline the evolution of Paragon into a full-featured pattern library that supports all micro frontend applications and increasingly all areas of the platform. The effort to grow Paragon’s capabilities is ongoing.

We intend to consolidate styling throughout the platform onto Paragon SCSS. To that end, a parallel effort has begun to remove legacy pattern library styling from the platform though this work was not fully completed in Juniper.

3.3.2. Site Headers & Footers#

For each MFE, the header and footer must be configured to echo the rest of the site or product experience to which it is connected. We have published various components, including the commonly configured header and footer elements, a cookie message banner, and others.

3.4. Core Platform Requirements#

3.4.1. Python#

About 55% of the Open edX platform is written in Python, meaning a large fraction of the code written over the past 8 or so years was reviewed and updated to support Python 3 as part of the Juniper release. While much of the work done for this effort was captured in JIRA as INCR-1, many other dependencies and related services were also updated to support Python 3. One example of these service upgrades was CodeJail, which is used to sandbox code written by course reams to assess or execute student problem submissions that rely on Python themselves.

3.4.2. Django#

A major, Juniper-release-defining upgrade to the platform was completed in service of upgrading the Open edX Platform and all its dependencies to support Django 2.2, which reached its end of life on April 1st, 2020. A comprehensive plan for this work was built and maintained in Confluence, and we have captured the team’s lessons learned from this project as well in Confluence. As we move forward we will continue to find ways to make it easy for the community to support distributed ownership of core platform health upgrades and maintenance so that we do not have to do major updates with the added time pressure of end of life support dates.

3.4.3. xModule / XBlocks#

xModule to xBlock Conversions: Across several of the core course content blocks, we have migrated away from the legacy xModule format in support of its eventual deprecation. Discussions, HTML, Video, and Problems have all been converted to XBlocks as part of this work.

3.5. Platform Health Monitoring#

3.5.1. Repository Dashboard#

With nearly 400 git repositories across 4 different GitHub organizations, it’s becoming both more important and more difficult to answer questions like “which repositories don’t have clearly defined owners?” and “how many repositories with Python code still don’t work with Python 3?” We’ve done this manually in the past with custom scripts and spreadsheets, but we need a more automated way to collect this information rapidly when needed.

Towards this end, we’ve created various simple checks in edx-repo-health. The checks answer questions like: Does the openedx.yaml file exist in repo? Is it parseable? Does Makefile have an upgrade target?

To run the checks, we’ve created the pytest plugin pytest-repo-health. The plugin will find the checks in the specified directory and run them on the directory of your choice. The instructions to run the plugin can be found in its readme file. For now, data from individual repos is output as a yaml file. The aggregated data for many files is output as a csv.

3.6. LMS / Studio Configuration#

3.6.1. JSON to YAML#

Most Open edX applications read a single YAML file. However the LMS and Studio historically read multiple JSON ones. We are making the LMS and Studio behave the same as other applications by having them read a single YAML file instead of multiple JSON ones. Technical details of converting your existing files are here: How to convert your LMS and Studio JSON configuration files to YAML.

3.7. Feature & Update Documentation#

3.7.1. Deprecation Process#

Building on the deprecation process defined in OEP-21 (Open edX Proposal 21), we have flagged many areas for deprecation, including areas mentioned above that have been replaced by new MFE experiences. A full listing of the areas marked for deprecation during Juniper’s time frame can be seen in Confluence on the developer details and notes page for Juniper.