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WARNING: DEV IS CURRENTLY VERY UNSTABLE.
This is a mega-checkin of the new Roles system. A lot of changes have
been made in core and modules.
Currently there are a lot of rough edges and known problems. We are
working hard on these .. .the reason for getting this into HEAD at this
stage is enable us to move faster (our branch was diverging from HEAD
too much).
Please keep an eye on http://docs.moodle.org/en/Roles for current status
and information for developers on how to use the new Roles system.
block is constructed. A new function exists to pump these notes out
in a standard way : print_recent_activity_note.
Module dependencies also updated because of this.
(While I was at it I also turned the autologinguests off for most module pages, except on the index.php pages and the view.php pages for those modules that allow guests)
Many thanks to Mike Churchward for his work on this and persevering
with sending updated versions to me. :-)
Shane and I have polished it up, rewritten a few parts (display-related)
and here it is, finally in CVS!
I think there will still need to be some optimisation for the SQL,
since it's still pretty intensive. Perhaps some sort of caching in
the session that gets modified along with the database whenever
something gets read.
However if there are problems the whole thing can be switched off
in the forum module config so this is not crucially urgent.
Logs now include a field called modid which contains the coursemodule id.
This makes it now possible to
- see complete logs per-activity
- do backup/restore of logs
The upgrade process will currently try to scan all the old logs and
rebuild this field based on available data (especially forums).
STILL TO DO: alter all the non-forum modules to send the coursemodule id
There is now a new field in forum_discussions which has the userid
of the author in it. This saves a lookup every time to forum_posts.
There is also some caching and rearrangement of the logic.
It seems to work OK, I'm about to do some speed tests on moodle.org
Still needs plenty of testing. There is no GUI yet for turning on
the groupmode just for the forum (this will be on the course page)
but you can put a 1 (visible) or 2 (separate) in the course_modules table.
1) There is a new site-wide configuration variable called maxbytes,
which provides an upper filesize limit for all (student) uploads.
2) There is a new course-level variable called maxbytes, which further
limits uploads within a course.
3) There is a new maxbytes field for forums, which further restricts
the size allowed in a particular forum. There is also a new config
variable in the module configuration to specify a default size
to use when defining a new forum.
4) Assignments already had a limit, but this is now aware of the other
limits, and like forums there is now a settable default value.
5) Finally, the sizes of files (Gb, Mb, Kb, bytes) is now translatable
in the language packs.
OK, this is a big check-in with some big changes, and needs work still.
It seems relatively stable, but I need help identifying the rough patches.
1) First grading scales support. There is a now a new table called "scale"
that contains grading scales. There can be site scales (course=0) and
custom course scales. These can be used in modules - I've only done
forums for now but that was the hard one. Scales can be edited via
the new item in the course admin menu.
There is one default scale - the connected/separate knowing one that used
to be in forum. To build this I pull data from the language packs
to create one during the upgrade, or anytime a scales menu is called
and no scales are found.
2) New roles for course creator and teachers. I've fixed up the course
menus and some other things but there's a lot left to do on this to
make it all smooth. The idea is that teachers no longer can edit courses
unless they are also course creators. The interface for this needs to
be smoothed out a fair bit and I need help with this.
The upgrade will upgrade all teachers to be creators, but will default
the new site config "creatornewcourses" to "no", so that effectively
these new teachers have the same privileges.
3) Simplified teacher management. There is no longer an "assign teachers"
and a "teacher roles" page - it's all on one page in course/teacher.html.
Phew ... time for a shower and then back into it.
Moodle tables.
ie user -> userid in many tables, plus in user_students
start -> starttime and end -> endtime
I've just done all this as carefully as I could ... I don't think
I missed anything but it's pretty intensive work and I'd be fooling myself
if I didn't think I'd missed a couple.
Note that this version should pretty much be able to bootstrap itself
using PostgreSQL now ... but this is untested
