Release notes for WeBWorK 2.8

Cautions

Warning :

Because new tables and fields have been added to the OpenProblemLibrary and for new MathAchievement features upgrading from stable webwork (WW-2.7) will require:

• Upgrading the tables by visiting the admin page. (The main change will be to add the field "description" to the set and user_set tables.)
• Updating the library collection webwork-open-problem-library
• Running webwork2/bin/OPL-update to update the library tables.

 sudo -E webwork2/bin/OPL-update # you may need the sudo if you don't have permission to write new files in webwork2/htdocs

• To use these instructions your server will require at least perl version 5.10.x (5.12.x would be better, 5.18 is the current version) to run weBWorK release/2.7. Type perl --version on the command line of your server to check.

Road map

October 7, 2013: Release/2.8 is pretty stable but may still have a few bugs.

The plan is to merge this into the "master" branch on December 1, 2013.

Please help test this release version. If you are installing by github you can easily switch to this branch and revert back to the current master branch if that becomes necessary. For instructions see Github.

Most changes only impact the instructor use of WeBWorK. Few new features (or bugs) will be apparent to students.

What's new?

• Installation and administrative updates (including course upgrades)
  • New CPAN modules:
    • Add CPAN requirement for JSON.pm (for sage)
    • Add CPAN requirement for File::Find::Rule
  • Tweaks to update course page -- slightly less scary warning error messages. -- adding harmless: in front of the message helps but we should change the color on these.
  • Allow db storage engine to be selected more easily. Speeds up OPL update in particular
  • New script that will set permissions for all files.
    • In particular the directory pg/lib/chromatic needs to have write permissions for the server since the C code color is compiled into it.
    • To set all of the file permissions in webwork use sudo -E /opt/webwork/webwork2/bin/setfilepermissions
  • Mathjax is replaced by a link to a folder at webwork/MathJax. This simplifies some git processes, but
    • you must verify the link is pointed correctly if you are not using standard layout
    • if you switch to a previous branch you will have to create and commit this link.

• Configuration updates
• Library updates
  • OPL is now default library (replacing the NPL -national problem library)
  • You can now search for problems by level
  • Tagging buttons can be enabled for privileged users
  • OPL taxonomy also stored in json file created when OPL-update is run.
  • More like this button in OPL
• Homework manager updates
  • Save tabs are now the default instead of the Cancel tag
  • Datepicker (calendars) in Homeworksets1 & 2
  • Add homework set descriptions as well as file names -- helps keep file names short. (requires database upgrade)
  • Hide hints to students check box.
  • Conditional release features -- hides homeworks sets until conditions are met.
• Classlist manager updates
• Authentication updates
  • Cosign.pm -- fix typos
  • Fix security issue when using bypassShib in Shibboleth module
• Theme updates
  • Math4 theme updates. (Goehle and Hsu)
  • MathView works with math4 theme
• Other instructor interface updates
  • Instructors can choose to show paths on hardcopy (or not). needs tweaking
  • Instructors can choose whether to show solutions in hardcopy needs tweaking
  • Fixed glitch in Statistics graph
• MathAchievement updates
  • Add tabs to Achievement editor.
  • New "potions" -- allow for perks for doing well on homework.
    • (does not require database upgrade)
• Accessibility updates
  • MathJax configured to provide better accessibility. Configured now only defaults.config.
• Security
  • More XSS vulnerabilities patched
• Student problem interface updates
  • numOfAttempts should now gives the expected results in homework sets. Previously the number of attempts might be off by one. (Gatewayquizzes need more testing.)
  • Removed old methods of displaying math
    • Should ascii math be restored?
    • Should LatexMathML be restored?
    • Should jsMath be restored?
  • Gateway quizzes now store past answers in the database.
• Localization/Translation updates
  • Chinese and Korean translations added.
  • More additions to French translation
• PG updates
  • Updates to probability and statistics macros (Kelly Black)
  • PGstatisticsGraphMacros.pl
  • Sage cell macros added (sage.pl added)
  • AskSage() call defined.
  • GeoGebraWebApplet added -- support for Geogebra HTML5 applets
  • contextComplexJ -- allows j to be used for square root of minus one -- for engineering classes
  • Chromatic.pm -- added to standard distribution -- used in graph theory problems.
  • New Matrix MathObjects features: MatrixCheckers.pl MatrixReduce.pl MatrixUnits.pl
  • Adjustments to LinearProgramming.pl to use MathObject fractions (preliminary work)
  • CompoundProblem2.pl -- new support for writing sequential problems
  • Essay answers can have new lines.
  • add _init function to contextTypeset.pl so that it is not reloaded.
  • Move text2PG.pl from Union macros to the main macros file folder pg/macros
  • Macro files are identified when reporting errors (restores behavior that was lost in a past update).
• Database updates
• Minor bug fixes and tweaks
  • Fix PGalias bug where files have the same name but different extensions.
  • Library -- after randomization try it and edit buttons use the new seed.
  • Corrected Units: replace 'years' by 'yr'
• Under the hood changes
  • WEBWORK_DIRECTORY is insured to be defined in WeBWorK::Constants.
  • js directory reorganized (again :-) )
  • Massive number of tweaks to make the basic WeBWorK CMS interface validate to W3 standards. Problems will usually not validate, mainly because of the use of $PAR which is not a container.

What could possibly go wrong?

• There are warning messages at the bottom of the page labeled Harmless: .... .
  • These indicate that many older courses have an extra field named published. This field was replaced by the field "visible" and has not been used for some time. In a future version of WeBWorK this field will be automatically removed, but we leave it in place for the moment for those rare cases where there is important data in the field. The extra field does no harm and the warning messages simply alert you that the unused field is still there.
• There are a series of warning messages that $displayMode is undefined.
  • This is most likely because you were using one of the display modes for showing equations that is now deprecated (e.g. jsMath). Click on the radio buttons in the lower left of the page to switch to MathJax or images mode. Also reset the default choice for displayMode in localOverrides.conf. You may also need to reset the default courses for individual courses on the Course Configuration page.
• There is a warning message that your modelCourse is not up to date
  • See Release_notes_for_WeBWorK_2.7#Update_modelCourse_and_Library
  • Construct the link using

  cd webwork/courses
  sudo mv modelCourses modelCourses.old
  sudo ln -s ../webwork2/courses.dist/modelCourse modelCourse