[WWdevel] some 2.3 notes for you all

[Sam H. <sa...@uo...>]

September is sneaking up -- it's looking a little late already to  
release a new
major version. If we were to release before I go to Santa Barbara  
(15-22 Aug),
what would be the minimum we'd need to do?

-- WW/Moodle --

make Course Title/Institution optional in Course Admin
(but also pre-fill these values from mod.html?)

improve wwassignment user experience a bit by creating the bridge  
object before
showing the mod.html form. that way, we can check for and report the  
existence
of the WeBWorK course in mod.html. if it doesn't exist yet, give a  
message like
"The WeBWorK course SCH103 does not exist yet: _Create WeBWorK Course  
SCH103_".

fix problems with teacher login in sql_moodle
<http://bugs.webwork.rochester.edu/show_bug.cgi?id=1043>

-- Gateway Testing --

how far along is Gavin in getting this new stuff in/tested/stable?

he added another database field: i'd REALLY like to have an automatic  
update
mechanism in place so that adding this field wouldn't have to happen  
manually.

-- Automatic Database Update --

wwdb_check will do simple things like adding tables/columns/indexes,  
changing
column types, and the like. this is sufficient for gavin's current  
changes.

eventually, we need a real database versioning system for more  
complicated
changes -- filling default values, normalization, and the like -- but  
we don't
technically have to have this mechanism in place right now.

we just need to ensure that the state of 2.3.0 databases is:
	- all tables/columns/indexes up-to-date and using the correct types
	- dbupgrade table exists
	- db_version=0 in dbupgrade table

(i'm also starting to think that the database upgrading should  
happend offline,
in a command-line script.)