A+ v1.19 Release Notes

June 2023

A+ v1.19.0

• A+ v1.19.0
• MOOC-Grader v1.19.0
• Git Manager v1.19.0
• a-plus-rst-tools v1.6.0

New features

• A+ LTI Platform v1.3 #1149
  • A+ courses may now use external LTI Tool v1.3 services.
• Optimized the course configuration process, that is, downloading the course JSON configuration from the Git manager (so called aplus-json) and saving the updated settings to the A+ database. #1078
  • The previous aplus-json is stored in the cache so that it is faster to detect new changes after a new git push in the course.

• Revamped the look of the error page for HTTP 403 Forbidden responses. ASCII Gandalf was removed. #858

• In questionnaire freetext questions that accept floating-point numbers, the accepted range of correct answers can now be configured. #140
  • Previously, the comparison always used a relative tolerance of 2%.
  • The new default tolerance is very strict, which makes it behave differently than the previous version. Set the tolerances in each question if you need a wider accepted range.
  • In RST courses, the new options are available in A-plus-rst-tools version 1.6.1.
• Git Manager: various course build performance improvements
  • The build container may use a new environment variable CHANGED_FILES. It lists course files that have changed since the last successful build. This can be used to optimize the course build script, e.g., by avoiding creating archive files when the contents have not changed. See the file courses/README.md for more information. #31
  • The web user interface for manually triggering new builds includes an option to set CHANGED_FILES to *. The purpose is to force a full rebuild if the course build script uses the CHANGED_FILES variable.
  • During a course build, the build log is updated between build stages.
  • Added course build performance statistics to the end of the build log.
  • git clean is run at the end of the build instead of the start. #23

A-plus-rst-tools v1.6

TODO

For system administrators and developers

A+

• aplus-json course configurations are stored in the cache.
  • On large courses, the JSON may be larger than 1 MB.
• Added Python linter to the project. Linters detect coding style issues. #1082
  • The script lint.sh at the root of the repo may be run locally.

MOOC-Grader

• Updated the docker pip package. It resolves issues with the latest urllib3 package.
• Code clean-up: removed old queue and wait variables related to the discontinued chroot sandbox. (The sandbox was removed many years ago.)

Git Manager

• Build containers are removed after finishing instead of leaving them hanging.
• Updated the pydantic and requests-toolbelt pip packages to resolve compatibility issues between libraries. #35
• rsync must be installed in the gitmanager and huey worker servers.
• Added new unit tests.

Neuvontajono / Lab Queue & Koodisäilö / Code Vault

Added support for the LTI Tool v1.3 protocol.