Release notes for WeBWorK 2.12

                                     WeBWorK                                    
                         Online Homework Delivery System                        
                                  Version 2.12                          

                    Copyright 2000-2016, The WeBWorK Project                    
                              All rights reserved.                              

Details
-------



Release date: May ??, 2016

Github repository:  https://github.com/openwebwork
Modules:    webwork2   pg   ww_install

Cautions

Warning :

There are significant database upgrades since 2.11, as well as potential new modules. There are also changes to the configuration files which will need to be integrated into your existing configurations. The process for upgrading to 2.12 is described below.:

Upgrade Instructions

1) Go to /opt/webwork/webwork2, /opt/webwork/pg and run

git pull origin master

on each directory (assuming that origin is your remote name for the openwebwork repo).

2) Depending on your system there may be new perl modules added for 2.11. Run check_modules.pl and look for missing modules. They may include:

• Digest::SHA

4) Check localOverrides.conf.dist and look for changes to add to the existing localOverrides.conf. There are a couple of important things here that will negatively affect your system if you don't deal with them.

• Library Statistics - This is a new feature (see below). There are variables which control whether or not global and local problem statistics are shown in the library browser.

# These flags control if statistics on opl problems are shown in the library
# browser.  If you want to include local statistics you will need to
# run webwork2/bin/update-OPL-statistics on a regular basis.  
$problemLibrary{showLibraryLocalStats} = 1;
# This flag controls whether global statistics will be displayed
$problemLibrary{showLibraryGlobalStats} = 1;

• Problem Re-Randomization - The problem rerandomization feature (see below) has default options which need to be set.

# The default prPeriod value (re-randomization period) to use for the newly created problem.
# It is suggested to use the value of -1, which means that the course-wide setting would be used
# Setting this to -1 defaults to the use of course-wide settings (suggested)
# Setting this to 0 disables periodic randomization regardless of the course-wide setting
# Setting this to a positive value will override the course-wide setting
$problemDefaults{prPeriod} = -1;

################################################################################
# Periodic re-randomization
################################################################################
# switch to enable periodic re-randomization
$pg{options}{enablePeriodicRandomization} = 0;
# course-wide default period for re-randomization, should be an integer
# the value of 0 disables re-randomization
$pg{options}{periodicRandomizationPeriod} = 5;

5) Check site-conf.dist and your apache configuration dist file and look for changes to add to the existing site.conf and apache configuration file. There is nothing particular in this version release but you should check just the same.

6) Check your courses.dist/modelCourse/course.conf and look for changes against your course.conf file. They may include:

• Removing a number of outdated settings.
• Commented out settings for controlling which instructors can see which students.

# The following hashes control which users are allowed to see students from which
# sections.  This is typically  used for large multi-section classes with many students, ta's and
# professors.  When set users will only be allowed to see students from the appropriate section in the following:
# -  Instructor Tools
# -  Student Progress
# -  Email
# -  Problem Grader
# -  Show Answers
# They will be able to see students from other sections on other pages.  
# These variables generally should be set here and not in defaults.conf.

# $viewable_sections = { user_id1 => [1 ,2 ,3] , # list of viewable sections for user_id1
#		       user_id2 => [1],
#		     };

# $viewable_recitations = { user_id1 => [1 ,2 ,3] , # list of viewable recitations for user_id1
#			  user_id2 => [1],
#		     };

7) Restart the webserver. (with apachectl graceful or similar command.)

8) Run the upgrade admin database script. You will ```not``` be able to access your admin course until this is done, and you will need to do that to upgrade the course databases.

upgrade_admin_db.pl

9) Log into the admin course and upgrade the databases for all of your courses. Your server will not be functional until you perform this step.

10) Download the latest version of the OPL. Note: If you have library statistics enabled this will also update your statistics tables.

• cd /opt/webwork/libraries/webwork-open-problem-library
• git pull origin
• OPL-update

Primary Changes

1.

Smaller Changes

• Added set percentages to the student grade page, as well as a course "Homework Total". This pull also replaces the old C with 100. #678
• Updated the orientation and demo sets to more accurately reflect how things currently work. #633
• Refactored the attempts table code out into its own module. #649
• Refactored the show me another feature out into its own module. #612
• Changed how options are grouped on the config page. Now there is a "Optional Modules" tab which has all of the different module options in one place. #675
• When generating individual set scores from the Scoring Tools page just-in-time sets now provide information about sub problems as well as top level problems #675
• Fixed a bug where apache child processes had the same random seed. #645
• Polished two existing features to make them more obvious. The first is the ability to display extra grade information to students on the Grades page by using email merge and the second is to restrict which students instructors can see to a particular section or group sections. #678
• Started making changes about how reduced scoring dates are reported to make it clearer that the reduced scoring date occurs before the due/close date. #683
• Fixed a bug where students may be unable to open a problem they previously attempted. #688
• Added localization files for Russian #690
• Add differentiation to parserRoot openwebwork/pg#267
• Added video macros to pg so that you can use `video` to deliver video hints via html5 pg:#264
• Fixed bugs with correct answers openwebwork/pg#262 openwebwork/pg#261
• Changed the ? popups to click instead of hover since the hover detection was spotty #675
• Added better more like this messages to the library browser #676
• Refactored all of the server rendering scripts to one big script `sendXMLRPC.pl`. In particular this enables automated sanity checking of the OPL #672
• Fixed a bug with gateways with multiple pages and checkboxes #641

Installer

The ww_install installer has been updated to support version 2.12. It has been tested on all of the distributions listed below. The installer has also been refactored to be more modular when it comes to different distributions. If you are interested in modifying the installer to work with your distribution post an issue on the ww_install github. You can read more about it at WeBWorK Installer Guide

Supported Distributions

The following are the distributions and features that are officially still supported. They have all been tested with the webwork installer. You still can use WeBWorK on whatever you like, of course. In particular if you install WeBWorK on a very recent version of Ubuntu or Fedora and have problems let us know.

• Ubuntu 15.10
• Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS)
• Debian 8
• CentOS 7
• Fedora 22
• Fedora 23

What could possibly go wrong?

• You may not be able to access the admin course. This could be because you have not run upgrade_admin_db.pl yet.