Braven Portal aka Canvas LMS

Just dropping this here for now but this whole README needs to be updated:

Switching b/n Booster and Accelerator dev mode.

Set your AWS_BUCKET in your local shell to one of the following:

AWS_BUCKET=beyondz-dev-canvas-files            # Accelerator
AWS_BUCKET=booster-portal-dev-file-uploads     # Booster

Then run:

docker-compose down 
docker volume rm canvas-lms_canvas-db 

Then run one of the following database refresh scripts:

echo "Setting up Accelerator DB" && ./docker-compose/scripts/dbrefresh.sh
echo "Setting up Booster DB" && ./docker-compose/scripts/dbrefreshbooster.sh

🛑 OBSOLETE. UPDATE ME! 🛑

How to install:

Follow the instructions from the Canvas wiki

You may also want to set up a virtual machine with Ubuntu dedicated to Canvas, as it requires some specific versions and a separate VM just makes it easier to manage without conflicts with other stuff installed on your computer. This is suggested in the Canvas wiki under the prerequisities section too and I suggest it too.

When creating the VM, make sure you give it at least 1 GB of RAM or Ubuntu will likely fail to install. The hard drive can be as little as 20 GB. Do a default installation of Ubuntu, then install gcc with apt-get install gcc and then follow the quick start guide. The automated script will get most the way.

Extra Installation Notes:

• On my box i had to run the i18n thing as root individually but it should work automatically on other boxes

• I was able to skip a few steps because the ruby for the main platform worked here. If you already have the BZ code running, you should also have ruby and might be able to take a shortcut too.

• If you get:

    NameError: method `respond_to_missing?' not defined in ActiveRecord::NamedScope::Scope
  

  Find: canvas-lms/config/initializers/rails2.rb:127 and comment that line, uncomment the method below to create the db

• You may need to change config/domain.yml

Starting the server:

1. Make sure you’re on version 1.9.3 of Ruby.

    $ ruby –v
      ruby 1.9.3p484 (2013-11-22 revision 43786) [x86_64-darwin13.0.2]
   

2. If not, just run (assuming you have rvm setup):

    $ rvm use 1.9.3
   

3. Run the following (a different port is used so it won't conflict with the main application):

    bundle exec script/server -p 3001 
   

If you see:

script/rails:6:in `require': cannot load such file -- rails/commands (LoadError)

Run:

bundle show rails

Then change the line of the error (script/rails:6) to:

require 'PATH_TO_RAILS/lib/commands' 

where PATH_TO_RAILS is found in the bundle show command.

BZ Git branch layout

instructure/stable - the cloud version of Canvas that you can signup/pay for at http://www.canvaslms.com/
    \
 beyond-z/stable - beyondz's forked copy
      \
   beyond-z/bz-master - the production branch hosted at https://portal.bebraven.org
        \
     beyond-z/bz-staging - the staging branch hosted at https://stagingportal.bebraven.org

Development Process

These steps assume that your development environment is setup and working.

Get the source code

1. On github, fork this repository to your personal github account, such as: https://github.com/<yourGithubHandle>/canvas-lms

2. On your local development environment, clone your forked repository

    $ mkdir <yourSrcDir>; cd <yourSrcDir>
    $ git clone https://github.com/<yourGithubHandle>/canvas-lms.git canvas-lms
   

Make a change

1. Create a feature branch from bz-staging

    $ git checkout bz-staging
    $ git checkout -b <yourBranch>
   

2. Make your code changes, test them locally, and commit them to <yourBranch>.

Deploy changes to staging

1. Push your commits to github

    $ git push origin <yourBranch>
   

2. Open a pull request against bz-staging

3. Have your pull request reviewed, merged, and pushed to the staging server.

   1. Command to deploy to staging if you have privileges

      `bundle exec cap staging deploy`
      

4. Have the changes tested on staging

Deploy changes to production

1. When a set of changes on staging is ready for a production release, merge the bz-staging branch into bz-master

   • E.g. assuming that you're running the merge from a clone of the https://github.com/beyond-z/canvas-lms repository and not your forked repository

        $ git checkout bz-staging 
        $ git pull origin bz-staging
        $ git checkout bz-master
        $ git merge --no-ff bz-staging
          [Commit the merge]
        $ git push origin bz-master
     

2. Deploy to production

   • Command to deploy to production if you have privileges

        $ bundle exec cap production deploy --trace &> prod_deploy_<insertDate>.log
     

Update BZ Canvas code

These instructions are for pulling changes from Instructure's cloud hosted version of Canvas into the Beyond Z version of Canvas hosted at (https://portal.bebraven.org)

1. Pull changes from instructure/stable into beyond-z/stable

   • Assuming that you're on a clone of (https://github.com/beyond-z/canvas-lms) and not your personal github

        $ git remote add upstream https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms.git
        $ git checkout stable
        $ git pull origin stable
        $ git pull upstream stable
        $ git tag -a bz-release/<insertDate> -m "Update our fork with Canvas upstream changes"
        $ git push origin stable
     

2. Merge changes from stable into bz-staging (same assumption as step 1 about which repo)

    $ git checkout bz-staging
    $ git merge --no-ff stable
    $ git push origin bz-staging
   

3. Do a staging deploy and test everything on the staging server!!

4. Do a normal production release to merge the stable, tested changes back into bz-master (from whence it came)

Submit Pull Request to Instructure

1. Make our change in bz-staging, push to bz-master as usual.
2. Pull upstream instructure/master into beyond-z/master so they are in sync.
   • Instructure requires you to submit PRs against master, not stable
3. Merge the change that we want from beyond-z/bz-master to beyond-z/master.
4. Submit the pull request from beyond-z/master to instructure/master.

Notes / Tips / Tricks

• Plugin folders:

    canvas-lms/app/views/plugins
    canvas-lms/lib/canvas/plugins/
  

• Testing is done in the /spec directory.

• node.js is apparently used to compile assets

• The basic setup is users have accounts in the system there's courses in the system user accounts are tied to courses via roles which grant them access to various parts

  external service login works by getting info from the other service then doing a lookup and create a local account as needed to match it and log them in.

  My strategy is to make BZ an OAuth provider and make Canvas understand it, similarly to a FB login. It won't be accepted upstream since BZ isn't big like Facebook but the way the existing code works is a series of if/else service!

  git should be able to keep our branch straight though.

  Then, hopefully, we can make it automatically and always use this instead of the built in login except for admin stuff, but I haven't gotten to that yet...

  The advantage of this oauth sso is we can then do cross-domain communication with an authenticated user - if we do have to iframe the resume app, for instance, we'll know which user is logged in without needing them to do a separate manual step.

• npm package installation errors

Occasionally an npm package gets a new version which has a dependency on another npm package that no longer supports our version of npm / node. This will show up in a staging deploy. You'll see an error like

    npm verb stack Error: No compatible version found: someNpmPackage@'>=2.1.1 <3.0.0'
    npm verb stack Valid install targets:
    npm verb stack ["1.0.0","1.0.1","1.1.0","1.1.2","1.1.3","2.0.0","2.0.2","2.0.3","2.1.0"]

To resolve this, you need to track down the npm package with a new version and a breaking dependency. The easiest way to do this is login to production where the last successful npminstall ran and navigate to the app root. Then run npm ls --json. Copy and paste that into a text editor and search for the failing package name. In this case, someNpmPackage. Open up the npm-shrinkwrap.json file and lock the dependencies down to the production versions by copy / pasting the tree starting at the failing package and working up to its root.

The rest is just the original Canvas README contents:

Canvas LMS

Canvas is a new, open-source LMS by Instructure Inc. It is released under the AGPLv3 license for use by anyone interested in learning more about or using learning management systems.

Please see our main wiki page for more information

Installation

Detailed instructions for installation and configuration of Canvas are provided on our wiki.

• Quick Start
• Production Start