docs: devstack settings

[regisb]

Description:

Plugins may have a "devstack" setting, and this was not documented (as far as I know). I was bitten by this as I was trying to override settings in a plugin, and my settings were being overridden by devstack settings.

[openedx-webhooks]

Thanks for the pull request, @regisb!

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[robrap]

Thanks @regisb. I’ll take this to our teams because:

1. I’m not aware of us needing to do this for our plugin, and maybe that is just personal lack of awareness and maybe there are limited circumstances where this is required?
2. 2U is helping with a DEPR around the devstack.py files. See this relevant comment: [DEPR] Devstack public-engineering#247 (comment). It would be nice to understand how this all fits in with the plan.

That said, I understand your intent is simply to get the docs in line with reality as a step.

[regisb]

I’m not aware of us needing to do this for our plugin, and maybe that is just personal lack of awareness and maybe there are limited circumstances where this is required?

We are currently working on a plugin (the new forum) that needs to override the COMMENTS_SERVICE_URL -- including in development. I did add the updated setting in common.py, but these values are immediately overridden by the values from edx-platform's devstack.py. A quick search revealed that the devstack settings are already used in the event routing backend (here).

2U is helping with a DEPR around the devstack.py files. See this relevant comment: openedx/public-engineering#247 (comment). It would be nice to understand how this all fits in with the plan.

I wasn't aware of that. I'll comment there.

[mphilbrick211]

Hi @robrap - any update on this?

[robrap]

@regisb: What is the status of this PR? Do you know how it relates to any changes that might be happening in terms of "devstack" => "development", or do we need to bring in Kyle? Thank you.

[regisb]

I am not familiar with the recent updates, so I'm not in the best position to comment. AFAIK this documentation change is still relevant.

[robrap]

@kdmccormick: Is this ready to land as-is? Will it need to be updated in the future? Thank you.

[kdmccormick]

We had planned to replace devstack.py with a simpler, YAML-free development.py. But, we found that Tutor's use of devstack.py is tightly coupled to production.py and the YAML-based settings schema. Replacing devstack.py without also replacing production.py would actually increase the overall complexity of the system. So, we are going to leave it as-is for now, and then introduce simpler YAML-free production+development settings all at once further down the road.

In short-- we will replace devstack.py eventually, but not in the immediate future. It would be reasonable to add this "devstack" slot to Django App Plugins now, with the understanding that we'll eventually need to deprecate it and replace it with a "development" slot.