So when IS Moodle 2 out?

So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Mary Cooch -
Number of replies: 12
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Yes I know the answer is -when it's readysmile But I was wondering if any developer was able to give any month (or season or year) rather than a vague guestimate? I read this forum post
but that was last year and things have changed a lot since then, according to the Moodle 2 planning document which I have been following very closely recently. While some elements are 95% done, some are only 5% done. I'v been informed on a number of occasions with confidence (by people who aren't following the document, I suspect) that "Moodle 2 will be out at the end of the year" Well, as we are not even in beta yet I find that hard to believe -so is anyone prepared to give a clearer answer? Or do these people know something I don't know?
Many thanks smile
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by sam marshall -
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You will definitely get nothing more than a vague guesstimate because no date has been released and features have not been finalised either. (And even if those two things had both occurred, you'd still not be getting something much better than a vague guesstimate. smile)

At present, I'd guess there might be a beta in the northern hemisphere's Spring 2010. (Meaning final release could be in summer depending on how the beta goes.)

This guess is definitely subject to change. (Probably more likely to change to 'later' than 'earlier', from recent experience.)

Or to put it another way...

When it's ready!

--sam

PS Just in case it's unclear, I am not part of the Moodle HQ team, so this guess obviously has no official status whatsoever.
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In reply to sam marshall

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Tim Hunt -
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Here is what I know about the items from the spreadsheet that are less than 50% (though similar disclaimer to sam. I stopped being a HQ developer at the end of July):

Community hub - Jerome is actively developing it now, and I don't see this holding up the beta.

Course Completion & Progress tracking - I am sure catalyst will have this done before everything else is. I just read the spec, and it looks good to me.

Secure RSS feeds - Will get finished no problem.

Backup 2.0 & IMS CC - Big Job for Eloy. Glad I don't have to work on this wink. This probably is one of the rate-determining steps.

Site-wide groups & Enrolment improvements - This is the one that worries me. I quite agree with Petr that there is a mess here that needs to be sorted out. However we still don't have a detailed plan, it is a fairly big job, and as ever there are lots of other things for Petr to work on. My vote is to live with the current mess until 2.1 (including doing a bodge job implementation of site-wide groups) so we can release Moodle 2.0 sooner.

Move grading to gradebook plugins - same as for enrolment changes. There is a mess here that needs to be cleaned up, but I would rather see an earlier 2.0, and live with the current mess until 2.1.

Navigation/Blocks/Pagelib 2.0 & JavaScript cleanup - This is what I was working on up until I left Moodle HQ, and Sam Hemelryk and Nicolas have picked up the baton and are running with it. Thank guys. Like backup, this could be another thing that controls how soon we can get to beta.

Text formats as plugins - Needs to be done before beta. Should not be a problem.

Wiki 2.0 - I don't know what is happening here, but I know it is waiting for some of the other things like text formats.

Lesson 2.0, My Moodle - Similarly, I don't know. However these are being done by non Moodle HQ people, so I guess that either they happen before the beta and are included, or get delayed until 2.1.


I think that if we control the scope, then it is still possible to get to beta this year. And I think that all developers should be working towards getting their beta work done before Christmas.

Then, like 1.9, expect a 3-5 month beta period, hopefully with things like a bugathon to encourage lots of people to participate in testing and bug fixing.

Anyway, that is my best guess.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Mary Cooch -
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Well that sounds like a very comprehensive answer to me Tim; thankyou smile
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Paul Vaughan -
Excellent. We were (and still are) planning for a Summer 2010 roll-out of Moodle 2 and this still fits that schedule.

Thanks Tim.
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In reply to Paul Vaughan

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Howard Miller -
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I don't want to be "that guy" but I was always a little disappointed/concerned that so much has gone into Moodle 2.0 and that it has taken so long when we could have done it in smaller steps. IMHO we should have always aimed for a 6-12 month release cycle. Assuming the above doesn't slip and considering the scale of the changes I don't see Moodle 2.0 being production ready for summer 2010. For many educational institutions that's another year missed which is a shame. There's so many great features that users really want.

Still, we'll see wink
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Martín Langhoff -
Early on, I shared your position -- I am all for small steps, but it is a fact that most of the internal API rework what's happening in 2.0 cannot be done in small steps. The File, Repository and DB APIs affect all the codebase.

And if you do a release with just internal API rework, incompatible with contrib stuff, and no new features... nobody uses it. (Ask apache folks smile ).

So I keep lighting candles for the Moodle HQ guys...
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Howard Miller -
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So I keep lighting candles for the Moodle HQ guys...

Yes, me too. I'm hoping for great things big grin
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Dan Poltawski -

I am all for small steps, but it is a fact that most of the internal API rework what's happening in 2.0 cannot be done in small steps.

Absolutely agree.

Moodle 1.9 is a strong release. There have been a lot of features over the last few releases, often making fundamental changes to the way teachers use moodle (e.g. roles/grades/groups). Giving our our users some time to feel comfortable with what they have now is not necessarily a bad thing.

Lets not forget the thousands of teachers around the world who are just getting to grips with Moodle in small steps. These users are likely to be unrepresented in the moodle.org community (due to its nature) but are still important.

I also don't think that missing another 'academic year' is necessarily a bad thing. With such large API changes the longer release cycle also helps those managing moodle deployments to have time to prepare. We should try and get our documentation (and API stability) to the stage that these people can be preparing their plugins and customisations to deal with the API changes early - some of this work is likely to be significant and when Moodle 2.0 is released the pressure will be on to deploy it ASAP. If people are working on getting their customisations ready early we can also exploit more early testing.

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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Paul Vaughan -
Absolutely. I wish I could do more....

Still, as soon as I hear 'bugathon' being yelled from the southern hemisphere I will update my Git repo and get stuck in. smile
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In reply to Paul Vaughan

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Dan Ballance -
I am a PHP developer working for a few schools in the Kirklees LEA in the UK and we are very keen to see Moodle 2 become a reality.

I am about to attend a meeting where I am going to ask for some of my work hours to be given over to help with the Moodle project.

I have been working with our own custom site-wide groups code for a couple of years now and would like to offer my programming skills to help get the enrolment / site-wide groups part of Moodle 2 working.

Is there anything I could do to help? I am happy to programme to someone else's requirements.

Sincerely,

Dan Ballance
Royds Hall High School,
Huddersfield
West Yorkshire
UK.
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: So when IS Moodle 2 out?

by Martin Dougiamas -
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We're still shooting for the end of the year, but a lot of things have to come together and new things are still popping up. In the end some features may be dropped rather than extending the release too much longer.

The roadmap and spreadsheet is the best way to keep up. I have some pending updates to make there, so keep an eye on that.
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