Visvanath Ratnaweera

CodeRunner, that candidate has been already mentioned, is a special type of a quiz question, which needs an external service called Jobe (Job engine) to run the code the students submit. The exercises are delivered as a Moodle quiz, which profits from the framework around the Quiz activity. In fact, CodeRunner installs further question behaviours making the quizzes complete (self) learning work sheets.

The other candidate, the Virtual Programming Lab (VPL), is not a quiz question type, but a full Moodle activity. It too needs an external service, called Jail Server. There is a dedicated forum for the VPL: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=8672.

If you want to deliver VPL through the Moodle quiz, there is a question type, the https://moodle.org/plugins/qtype_vplquestion.

Andrew, I haven't automated a great deal. The Git work-flow, the shell commands and the occasional shell scripts have adjusted to the three-digit version during the long 4.x era. So a two-digit version is not direly needed for my purposes. If you say, there is no way going back to two-digit, no point in looking at the confusions users had in the past, and some still have, in detail. Basically the problem was: What is MOODLE_401_STABLE? Is it 4.0.1? Or 4.10? Or something entirely different?

I have no problem in remembering the answer. (MOODLE_401_STABLE stands for the whole set of 4.1 releases, the whole branch, i.e. 4.1, 4.1.1, 4.1.2,.. 4.1.15,.. and the weeklies in between!) I thought MOODLE_41_STABLE is more intuitive and would help the uninitiated. If there are very strong reasons for MOODLE_401_STABLE notation and as you say, the Moodle developers have built their tools based on that assumption, "intuition" is not a sufficient reason for a change, even if possible.

Others too are looking for explanations. See 'sessions' table gets populated, 'dbsessions' is not set [Moodle 4.1.15+].

Hi

I was going to suggest a blog article. The wiki you linked does the same.

Upgrading these tools to match the changes happening, specially in the quiz landscape, is a problem. But the performance effects of those changes are also something one has to be in touch with. Now the quiz system has been overhauled once again for the coming 5.x series, a performance comparison with 4.5 won't be a bad idea.

 

What I almost missed: We are talking of a difference VM than the 25 or so VMs your institution run. This particular exam VM is a strong web server and database server duo! As always, we don't know how the JMeter scripts represent real users but still are very good for comparing two servers under the same (quiz) load.

Rick, I like how you set the presentation, how the simple teacher progresses towards giving a master class, introducing the full set of features also from the basic to the advanced, giving it a flow - and the hardest, arguing that the behaviour is also the most logical, defending them, no controversies.

If you are looking for something to improve, you've fast forwarded a bit too much. I prefer to see how things evolve and also give the new stuff time to settle.