[Building Sakai] consider updating your copy of Lessons, particularly if you are running 2.9 before 2.9.3

[Hedrick Charles]

Enough things are going on in Lessons that you may want to use the newest code for Fall. This code will be included with 2.9.3, so if you plan to use that you'll be OK.

In particular, for 2.9 before 2.9.3, there are issues because of changes to the gradebook. If your users use "Don't Release Item Until All Prerequisites are Completed" it will cause tests and assignments not to show in the gradebook for certain students unless you use the newest Lessons. Lessons own gradebook items also will not show in 2.9.1 and 2.9.2, though this is being fixed for 2.9.3.

The Lessons that come with 2.9.x (Lessons 1.4.x) and Lessons trunk are both being QA'ed. I will tag Lessons trunk at the same time as the 2.9.3 release is made so you can find the trunk version that corresponds to the 1.4.x version that comes with 2.9.3. Rutgers and Michigan plan to deploy trunk, so that's where our internal QA is focused. (Development on trunk will continue after that release, but the changes I currently have in mind are low-risk, so it should be safe to continue following trunk at least for a while.)

Trunk and 1.4.x of Lessons are very similar. The same fixes are being done to both. The difference is that trunk has a few new features:
* Inline questions
* Rubrics for student content
* A redo of the skin done at Michigan. They have alternate skins with more interesting appearance, as shown at the conference.

Common Cartridge export (and various fixes to CC import) was checked into 1.4.x as well as trunk, as promised at the conference. If you took a preliminary version of it you'll want to update, as I've been making continuing improvements to both export and import. I believe export will now export all content that is exportable. Further work will focus on adapting items that are not directly representable within the CC specifications, i.e. types of quiz questions and Lessons items that aren't supported in the specifications.

Please DO NOT RUN the current 1.4.x or trunk in production on 2.9. (It should be fine on 2.8, which doesn't use the new gradebook code.) To facilitate QA I have disabled caching in the gradebook interface. I'm concerned about the impact that on gradebook performance. I will enable caching for the last 2.9.3 RC (on both 1.4.x and trunk).

Both 1.4.x and trunk of Lessons are being tested with Sakai 2.8, though I'd certainly rather see sites use 2.9. The build has been changed so that there is a fairly simple profile setting to match the version of Sakai you're using.

The urgency for update applies mostly to sites planning to use 2.9.1 or later.