Release notes for WeBWorK 2.7

Release/2.7 was earlier called release 2.5.1.3

Cautions

Warning :

Because new tables and fields have been added for the essayQuestion feature upgrading from ww2.5.1.1 will require:

• Replacing the current database.conf with database.conf.dist (assuming you have made no changes to your local database.conf version)
• Upgrading the tables by visiting the admin page -- which will create also create showPastAnswers table
  • This replaces the showPastAnswers logs and also supports the essayQuestion feature.

• 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.

• For those running perl 5.8.x (e.g. RHEL5 systems) we have a legacy distribution that will run on your operating system. We can't make any guarantees about how much longer we can continue to support perl 5.8.x

Quick install

If you are already using the software from github.com/openwebwork then the upgrade is quite simple:

• Update webwork2

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2 
 git branch
   * master 
    .... perhaps other branches
 git checkout master     # switch to master branch
 git pull                # pull down software updates

• Move database.conf out of the way

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf
 mv database.conf  database.conf.save

• Update pg

 cd /opt/webwork/pg
 git branch
 git checkout master
 git pull

• Update library

 cd /opt/webwork/libraries/webwork-open-problem-library
 git pull 

• Run check_modules.pl and update CPAN modules if needed.
• Update library database

 cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/bin
 ./OPL-update           # update the database indexing the OPL

• Restart webserver.
• Go to admin course, click on the "upgrade courses" tab and update the course databases.

• After things checkout you might like to visit webwork2/conf/ and compare localOverrides.conf and localOverrides.conf.dist. There might be some new features that you will want to enable.

Switching from SVN to Github

If you have been using software from the SVN (or CVS) and this will be the first time using software from the current github/openwebwork site then follow these Github instructions to set up your new webwork installation.

The initial setup takes a little more time to do safely (so that you can back out if needed) but once it is done you will be able to follow the sequence above for subsequent upgrades. Reediting configuration files will be come a rare, possibly non-existent practice.