Update the custom theme independently

[Trinh Nguyen]

Hi,

To help our front-end designer I just created a PR to the configuration repo to add a bash script called update_theme. You can use it to reload your custom theme with changes from a git repo without updating a whole stack (using /edx/bin/update).

https://github.com/edx/configuration/pull/1098

As feanil suggested in the comment, a better solution would be to add a new option to the update script. But, I just want to avoid adding more params to the update script and to make the task as simple as possible.

All comment and feedback are welcome!

Thanks,

--

http://about.me/dangtrinh

[Yarko Tymciurak]

Having been in on the bringup efforts last June, where everything was a script - I agree with Feanil, this is not a good idea.

For one thing, if you need to just update a theme, you have little more to do than you would to run your script:

As edxapp user (environment & shell all setup, as per any maintenance task on fullstack, as per

https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/edX-Managing-the-Production-Stack#compile-assets-manually):

all you need to is:

git -C ../themes/out_theme  pull
paver update_assets lms --settings=aws

and / or if you want:

paver update_assets cms --settings=aws

If anything, for convenience (and there's some point to it), updating  edx-platform/paverlib/assets::update_assets  would be the way to do this (not a shell script, and not ansible).

Here's what I suggest:

- do this manually for now (it's simply too easy w/ paver / rake / whatever-may-come-next);

- wait for others to chime in (I suspect there will be more theme usage);

If people agree, then the way I suggest is add a "--update_theme" flag to "paver update_assets", and conditioned on that being set, referring to the appropriate env file:  /edx/app/edxapp/{lms,cms}.env.json:

• if edxapp_use_custom_theme is true, then:
• run: "git -C ../themes" / edxapp_theme_name + " pull" before the other asset commands

This is simple enough, consistent enough, and presupposes a naturally useful constraint:

• You have already at least once done an "update" which included your desired theme repo & version/branch pull

If you want to change the branch or repo, then - in order to ensure other commands reading lms.env.json are consistent,

the prerequisite is to (in those cases) would be do to another update.

[Yarko Tymciurak]

BTW - you don't need options in the update script - the theme is already picked up (and should be initially picked up so that ansible can appropriately set all the {lms, cms}.env.json  variables, which other commands (such as the update_assets)  look at and need.   This is already set (currently) in your edit of server-vars.yml, update does what its needed to do already.

what you want is a superset of "update_assets", which includes updating (an already used) theme from a repo.

I do think that the paver command is the natural place to put this.

[Yarko Tymciurak]

to put it another way - 

since themes are a part of edx-platform, ansible-playbooks need to process the edx-platform roles and playbooks to generate a consistent {lms,cms}.env.json anyway, so there is no benefit to having a separate "update just the theme repo" command, I think.

In any case, if you did try to do it that way, you would add a lot of complexity (unnecessarily) to either [a] just have it be syntactic sugar for an edx-platform update, or [b]  you'd have to write parallel playbooks/roles to process all the needed variable for lms.env.json, without actually updating the repositories (if that is what you mean to do).

If it's simpler you want - that wouldn't be.

If it's faster you want - that also wouldn't be.

This is what points to updating / adding an option to paver command as the right "kind" of place to put this (if you really want it - I still think a git pull, and a paver update_assets is simple enough).

[Trinh Nguyen]

Thank Yarko for your comments and suggestions!

I haven't catch up with the paver kind-of-thing since I'm still using the old version of configuration. So, I guess this is the right time to look at it.

[Yarko Tymciurak]

paver is in edx-platform, not edx/configuration

[Yarko Tymciurak]

Still - I don't think it's worth the bother with paver (and I certainly would not add a shell script to the repo):

It's simply 2 commands to run (all you save with any tool / paver / shell extension is _one command line!!!_

Just run those two commands manually.

git pull

paver assets_update

That's easy enough.

No need to do anything to the repo for that.

[Trinh Nguyen]

Wow, It's pretty simple!

BTW, Just noted that the document about compiling assets manually has been changed recently (use paver instead of rake).

[Trinh Nguyen]

There is one more thing, Is there any documentation showing how to use paver in Open edX?

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:35 AM, Trinh Nguyen <dangt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow, It's pretty simple!

BTW, Just noted that the document about compiling assets manually has been changed recently (use paver instead of rake).

--

http://about.me/dangtrinh

[Yarko Tymciurak]

RE:  compiling assets;  it didn't matter - the rake command has been running paver for a while.   It just looks like they've finally deprecated the rake command.

RE:  documentation:   http://paver.github.io/paver/cmdline.html   should help,  e.g.  "paver help"

[Trinh Nguyen]

I meant what are the options of paver in Open edX, something like:

paver update_assets ...

or

paver watch_assets ...

So, I think the best way to get started is to look into the paverlib/assets.py

--

http://about.me/dangtrinh

[Yarko Tymciurak]

Well, but like rake also - its more than the assets file, and is meant to be self I documenting.

paver help

Will give hi level list

paver some_cmd -h

Will give synopsis & options for that.

[Trinh Nguyen]

Got it. Thanks Yarko!

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http://about.me/dangtrinh

[Trinh Nguyen]

I just added an option to pull the custom theme repo into the update_assets:

https://github.com/dangtrinh/edx-platform/commit/ab8b315bc304478d76bef7f5c764f7986bd80444

So I can pull updates from my custom theme repo and compile assets with:

paver update_assets pull-repo lms --settings=aws

What do you think?

[Trinh Nguyen]

Sorry, use this instead (confused with order of the system argument. e.g: lms/studio):

paver update_assets lms --settings=aws --pull-repo

https://github.com/dangtrinh/edx-platform/commit/650fbcdbe5ff9a49da66bc885a12479d9694683f

--

http://about.me/dangtrinh

[Yarko Tymciurak]

Thanks Trinh -

I'll look at in more detail, comment in the PR in a little while.

Regards,
- Yarko

[Yarko Tymciurak]

On Wednesday, May 21, 2014 3:48:21 AM UTC-5, Trinh Nguyen wrote:

Sorry, use this instead (confused with order of the system argument. e.g: lms/studio):

paver update_assets lms --settings=aws --pull-repo

https://github.com/dangtrinh/edx-platform/commit/650fbcdbe5ff9a49da66bc885a12479d9694683f

Thanks Trinh -

I've made some comments on your code change in github.

I've suggested renaming the option to "--update-theme";  I think that might be clearer, and is more consistent with its link to the update command (which should be called at least once, first).   There are a few other logic comments on your code in the repo. 

[Trinh Nguyen]

Thanks Yarko! Just getting started. Your suggestions will help me a lot!

[Trinh Nguyen]

I made some changes based on your advice: ee5362e

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 6:04 AM, Trinh Nguyen <dangt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Yarko! Just getting started. Your suggestions will help me a lot!

--

http://about.me/dangtrinh