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Ulmo Sandbox and Release Preparation #1281

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Ulmo Sandbox and Release Preparation#1281
@ahmed-arb

Description

@ahmed-arb
ahmed-arb
opened on Oct 1, 2025

This issue is for tracking the items to prepare https://github.com/overhangio/openedx-release-demo for Ulmo cutoff and eventually Ulmo release.

Ulmo cutoff is expected to take place on October 9, 2025 October 23, 2025 October 30, 2025. Once the branches are out upstream, the community will be looking forward to the sandbox provided by Edly. Tutor and tutor plugins will require ulmo branches with appropriate changes for the sandbox to complete.

A note: once the branches are created, any changes to main would need to be manually added to the ulmo branch. Therefore, a rebase on main whenever main changes would be required to ensure the ulmo branch is always up-to-date

This issue is meant for tracking the statuses of various repositories needed for sandbox and the release. It will act as a todo list to ensure that tutor and its plugins have ulmo branches created from main before the cutoff date (even though there will be potential failures on CI against it) and have a PR against release.

For sanity checks, make sure to run main image build and init task on local tutor <local/dev> do init --limit=pluginnname.

The sandbox script expects the branches to be available on the actual repository, not the fork. If you are assigned a repository but cannot push to it directly, please get in touch with @ahmed-arb or the maintainer of the repository with git patch file so that they can create the PR in the appropriate repository with your provided changes

Tutor & Plugins Todo List

Available on launch

Available within a week

Not needed for sandbox

Sandbox Repo Todo List

  • PR 1 ()
  • ...

Context/Steps

Every six months, Tutor maintainers sync up with the Build/Test/Release working group to create the next version, both of Open edX and Tutor.

In the scenario below, we are upgrading Open edX from fictional “Delta” to “Epsilon”. Tutor will upgrade from v4 to v5 (“d”=4, “e”=5).

(these instructions are pulled and adapted from this old discussion topic)

Create New Release Branches

In Tutor core and all plugins, we must create “epsilon” branches off of the main branches. For each repo, this looks like the following:

git checkout main

git pull

git checkout -b epsilon

Push the created “epsilon” branch to the upstream repo: git push

Upgrade Tutor core and plugins

  • Modify about.py:
    • bump the version number to 5.0.0.
  • in Tutor core, set the version_suffix to an empty string.
  • In plugins’ pyproject.toml, bump the version of the “tutor” package that the plugin depends on:
dependencies=["tutor>=5.0.0,<6.0.0"],
optional-dependencies={"dev": ["tutor[dev]>=5.0.0,<6.0.0"]},
  • Create a changelog entry with make changelog-entry: "💥[Feature] Upgrade to Epsilon. (by @YourGithubUsername)"
  • Replace all instances of “[dD]elta” that make sense (i.e: not in the CHANGELOG.md!)
  • Go through the Dockerfile templates and manually upgrade all the 3rd-party requirements that you can find (dockerize, ipdb, etc.). Sometimes it’s not desirable to upgrade some pieces of software: for instance node and python are expected to run a specific version. Those required version numbers are specified in the edx/configuration 5 repo. (look for SERVICENAME_VERSION variables)
  • Make sure that the plugin images (if any) are built correctly: tutor images build all.
  • Make sure that the plugin can be correctly initialized: tutor local do init --limit=pluginnname.
  • If you need to make some changes to the docker-compose*.yml files and patches, make sure to backport these changes to the k8s-* patches, for compatibility with Kubernetes.
  • Make sure that the plugins work correctly by doing some basic usage testing. Pay close attention to any log (warning or error) that come out of the plugin containers as well as the lms container.
  • git commit -a -m v5.0.0
  • Push the created “epsilon” branch to the upstream repo: git push

The release branches should be updated regularly to take into account the latest changes from the main branch. During the release process, it is frequent that changes are pushed to the release and main branches, and the latest “espilon” branch must have those changes as well. Be prepared to push --force the “epsilon” branches frequently.

⚠️ Plugin tests will fail in the release branches, because the plugins can’t find tutor>=5.0.0 on pypi. To resolve that, we should update the test scripts to install tutor from source (pip install -e --config-settings editable_mode=compat https://github.com/overhangio/tutor@epsilon#egg=tutor). But it’s inconvenient to do that for each and every plugin. So maybe we should consider migrating to a centralized “tutor-test-plugin” GitHub action. This action would be versioned according to the Tutor major version (@5).

Pull Requests Checklist

When the PRs are created from ulmo against release branch, it is important to add some checklists on the PRs. Those checklists must be completed before the merge. Therefore, when you create the PR, please add the checklist in PR description. This is only applicable to plugins under Overhangio GitHub organization.

Tutor Core

v21.0.0 ulmo release

### Todos before merge
 - [ ] Ensure **changelog-entry** exists for ulmo upgrade
 - [ ] Ensure changelog exists for v21
 - [ ] Ensure CI/Tests are working as expected
 - [ ] Ensure ulmo branch is up-to-date with main (updated as of <date>)
 - [ ] Ensure OPENEDX_COMMON_VERSION is pointing to correct tag release/ulmo.1
### Merge Option
 - [ ] Ensure "Merge Commit" option is used to merge the branch into release (Responsible: @ahmed-arb). This is needed to ensure the commit history when release is merged back into main

Note: In Tutor core, we won't have release/ulmo.1 available until the actual release in December. Therefore, until December, OPENEDX_COMMON_VERSION should be pointed to release/ulmo.master and this should be changed to release/ulmo.1 before release

Tutor Plugins

v21.0.0 ulmo release

### Todos before merge
 - [ ] Ensure **changelog-entry** exists for ulmo upgrade
 - [ ] Ensure changelog exists for v21
 - [ ] Ensure CI/Tests are working as expected
 - [ ] Ensure ulmo branch is up-to-date with main (updated as of <date>)
### Merge Option
 - [ ] Ensure "Merge Commit" option is used to merge the branch into release (Responsible: @ahmed-arb). This is needed to ensure the commit history when release is merged back into main

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