David Mudrak's blog

Current stable version 2.0.1+

Total of 64 patches were accepted by the integration and testing teams during this week for Moodle 2.0 stable branch (which still lives on Git ‘master’). This is a new record in terms of number of pull requests. Also, with only 5 pull requests rejected, this is the best accepted/rejected ratio achieved so far. It also means I am no longer able to provide an overview of all accepted changes so I will focus only on those I helped to test or review.

Moodle can now be installed on PostgreSQL server with ‘standard_conforming_strings’ option enabled. This option is on by default since PostgreSQL 9.1 and Bruce Momjian’s blog post explains why (MDL-26351). ♦ It has been known for a while that MSSQL and Oracle databases do not like SELECT DISTINCT if the list of returned columns contains some TEXT ones. This is tricky especially in a case like SELECT DISTINCT t.*, if the table t contains some TEXT fields. As most Moodle developers use PostgreSQL or MySQL as a part of their environment, some affected queries still survive in Moodle code. Eloy Lafuente found and fixed couple of them, using a nice inner join with subselect solution (MDL-26371). ♦ Mark Nielsen spotted a bug in the implementation of print_collapsible_region() function. Glenn Ansley took this as an opportunity for his first contribution to Moodle, created a branch at his moodle.git clone at github.com and prepared a patch there (MDL-26131). ♦ Andrew Davis fixed a really nasty bug in blogging subsystem that was causing accident removal of all recent records in the table ‘post’. This table holds not only blog posts but also user notes too, for example (MDL-26010). A regression of a recent change in the upgrade code of SCORM module was fixed by Eloy Lafuente (note for myself: next time I test SCORM upgrade code, I shall have some SCORM module instance actually created at the site… MDL-26361) ♦ And finally, images embedded into forum posts that are sent by email to the forum subscribers are now correctly displayed in the email clients. Given that the client has access to the forum either via the current user’s session (in case of web email clients) or the course grants access for anonymous hosts (MDL-25944).

Previous stable version 1.9.10+

All 9 submitted patches were accepted and they landed on MOODLE_19_STABLE branch. ♦ Petr Škoda fixed a problem with redirecting to a login page on https protocol and a bug mediaplugin filter. ♦ Eloy Lafuente found some queries using SELECT DISTINCT from TEXT fields in 1.9 version, too. ♦ Dan Marsden fixed a bug in a pop-up form in SCORM module. ♦ Aparup Banerjee fixed the number of glossary entries being displayed in the recent activity block. ♦ Tim Hunt fixed a bug in quiz that used to display overall feedback based on the rounded grade instead of the real value.

Quotes of the week

“We will ALWAYS have blockers and critical issues, they never end. If we tried to solve them all, we’d never release anything.”
– Martin Dougiamas has a pragmatic view on release policy

“Any code you write yourself should follow all the coding guidelines perfectly. However, when looking at old code, you should be tolerant of what you find.”
– Tim Hunt in a discussion on a policy of naming database tables in Moodle

“Never trust user input.”
– Jonny Barnes at an excellent page summarizing what should a developer know before building a public web site

Is it there yet?

If you are watching some issues in the tracker, you probably know those emails informing you about the change of the issue status. If you receive an email that your favourite issue has been resolved or closed, it is good to understand what exactly it means.

As you probably know, the current Moodle development workflow is based on so called fork and pull model. All developers submit their patches into separate branches in their own public forks (clones) of the official Moodle git repository. Then they ask the integration team for pulling the changes from these forks into the official repository. Although most Moodle contributors seem to use github.com as a place to publish their repositories, we do not use pull requests feature offered by Github. Instead, a PULL issue in Moodle tracker must be created for each submitted branch (patch). In the created PULL issue, the contributor describes the submitted patch and provides information for the integration team necessary for including the patch.

The relevant MDL issue being fixed by the submitted patch is marked as resolved immediately after the PULL request is created. The contributor is supposed to link the PULL issue with the MDL issue and resolve the MDL issue. So resolved means there is a patch available for this issue, but the patch is not part of Moodle package yet.

Every week on Monday, the integration team goes through the list of submitted PULLs and reviews the patches. If the patch is accepted, it is merged into integration.git repository and the status of the PULL issue is changed to “ready for testing”. When all submitted patches are reviewed (that is they are either accepted or rejected), the testers come and test all changes. If the test passes, the tester closes the MDL issue (alternatively, the release manager closes all MDL issues with their tests passed at the end of testing). So closed MDL means the patch has been accepted by both integration team and testing team. But the patch is still not part of the official Moodle package.

You must wait until all integrated patches are tested and the patches are pushed from integration.git repository into the official moodle.git repository. At the same time, ZIP and TGZ packages are regenerated and can be downloaded. This typically happens on Wednesday afternoon (European time).

As an example, let us say I work on some bug. On Thursday morning, I commit a fix into my repository at github.com. Then I go to the tracker, create a new PULL issue and resolve the linked MDL issue. On Monday, a member of the integration team reviews my patch and if I am lucky enough, they accept it. On Tuesday, a member of testing team follows the steps I provided in the PULL requests and hopefully confirms that the patch really fixes the reported issue. The linked MDL issue is closed then. Therefore the next weekly build generated on Wednesday will contain my fix.