Hello everyone! The edX team has been hard at work upgrading Open edX to use Django 1.8 instead of 1.4. This change just landed on edx.org, and since things seem to be stable there, we're going to merge the change back to master today. Here's what you need to know.
- If you are using an Open edX release, this change will NOT affect you until you upgrade to Dogwood. You can stop reading now. (Dogwood will be the next Open edX release after Cypress, and it has not been cut yet.)
- Django 1.8 does some things differently from Django 1.4. If you are doing any development on the Open edX platform, please review the upgrade release notes that the edX team has put together: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/display/TNL/Django+1.8+Upgrade+Release+Notes
- The edX team has put a lot of effort into researching the best way to upgrade everyone's devstacks, and has found that the best way forward is to build a new devstack. A new image has been built to support both Django 1.8 and python 2.7.10. Today we will merge Django 1.8 to master. Once this is complete additional instructions will follow on where to get the new Vagrant image and any additional steps you may need to take to get 1.8 running locally. Please see the devstack docs if you need a refresher on how to install a devstack: https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/edX-Developer-Stack
- If you have an open pull request, it will need to be rebased onto master once the Django 1.8 merge is completed. We highly recommend that you re-test your pull request on Django 1.8 to make sure that it still works the way you expect. Here is some documentation for how to rebase a pull request: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/How-to-Rebase-a-Pull-Request
Some of you may be wondering why this upgrade is happening at all, if it's so disruptive. Django is the web framework that the entire Open edX platform is built on top of, and it's maintained by a separate group of people. Django has continued to grow and improve for several years since Open edX first started, and Open edX has not kept up with those improvements. The Django team recently dropped support for version 1.4, which means that Open edX will no longer receive security fixes for issues that impact Django 1.4. In the interest of keeping Open edX secure, edX is upgrading to the latest stable version of the Django software, which is currently supported by the Django team, and will continue to be supported for years to come.
If you have any questions about this upgrade, please don't hesitate to email [email protected].
Thanks,
Brian Beggs Software Engineer, edX