Subject: [LON-CAPA-dev] Draft 0.99.0 release announce

From: Guy Albertelli II <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 14:49:06 -0400 (EDT)

Hi All,

Here is a draft version of the 0.99.0 release announcement

Let me know what you think.

New Beta Version 0.99.0 Released

This release is a first pass at a 1.0 release. It is probably more
buggy then normal and is thus considered a beta release.

Notable Enhancements:

 *rankresponse, matchresponse
 *rework of CHRT and STAT
 *rework of SPRS
 *new publishing control mechanism allows finegrained control over what
  courses' and users can use resources
 *new course keys allow one to sell access to courses
 *rework of printing interface
 *new "helper" for setting resource parameters
 *plus hundreds of other requests

1) You will need to be running Redhat 7.X (preferably 7.3)
   for this release to work

2) download and install the 3.6 systemperl rpm

If you are running RedHat 7.X get
http://install.loncapa.org/resources/LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.6-rh7.i386.rpm

Install it by doing:
rpm -e `rpm -q -a | grep systemperl`
rpm --install --force --nodeps LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.6-rh7.i386.rpm

Verify it is installed by doing:

$ rpm -q LON-CAPA-systemperl

RedHat 7.X will show
LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.5-rh7

3) Download the new LON-CAPA tarball from
wget http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/loncapa-0.99.0.tar.gz

and untar it

tar xzvf loncapa-0.99.0.tar.gz

4) Run the UPDATE script as root
cd loncapa-0.99.0
su
./UPDATE

5) restart the system services
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol start
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start

----NOTES
1) Many questions are answered at http://help.lon-capa.org
2) Defects reports, and enhancements requests can be entered at
   http://bugs.lon-capa.org
3) Mailing lists can be joined and left at http://mail.lon-capa.org
4) We have withdrawn support for RedHat 6.2 for subsequent releases
   please update your systems to RedHat 7.3
5) We are working on supportting RedHat 8.0 and 9, we hope to support
   them by version 1.0 of LON-CAPA

-- 
[email-masked]  LON-CAPA Developer  0-7-6-9-

---

From: Gerd Kortemeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 17:47:38 -0400

Well, this is it.

For the coming months, we are now in

  testing/debugging/bug-fixing/documentation mode

- I know this is far less exciting than our usual way of doing  
business, but it means:

* no more new features
* no code changes beyond what is absolutely necessary to fix a bug
* simulate running a course, trying all components (especially those  
that you did not write)
* no more new features (did I already say that?)
* no code revolutions
* if *anybody* asks you to write a new feature, the appropriate answer  
is "please file that suggestion into Bugzilla for an upcoming release"
* file all bugs into Bugzilla
* no more new features
* look at each other's CVS commit posting

If your fingers are absolutely itching to write something new and  
never-before-seen, I would suggest adding to the user documentation as  
an outlet :-P

I am very proud of what LON-CAPA can do today:

We have more features than most systems on the market, our distributed  
digital library and reusability concept is unparalleled, and our  
assessment engine is simply the best that's out there. And all of that  
open-source and free!

Sure, it would be nice to have this or that new functionality, and it  
would also be nice to handle this or that more elegantly internally,  
but the time for that is after 1.0.2. I know this can be very hard, but  
I ask everybody (users, programmers, and PIs) to be disciplined. Right  
now, given were we are, the only thing that can really hurt us are  
bugs. Release 1.0 at the end of the summer must be rock-solid stable  
and reliable. We have to get away from the reputation that we are "not  
quite there yet."

In addition to all of us individually testing the system, we will  
organize some group testing sessions, where we actually "play course"  
from beginning (enrollment) to end (grading).

- Gerd.

On Monday, May 26, 2003, at 02:49  PM, Guy Albertelli II wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> LON-CAPA-dev mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://mail.lon-capa.org/mailman/listinfo/lon-capa-dev

---

From: "Matthew Brian Hall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 09:10:42 -0400 (EDT)

> LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.5-rh7

Probably not since we install the 3.6 version of the systemperl.

--
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Matthew Hall           LON-CAPA developer         [email-masked]
123 North Kedzie Hall                    Michigan State University
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