Version 4.0.0

New Features

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Features Changed

  • The training portal has been made more resilient when allocating and managing workshop sessions under load. Previously, when many sessions were being requested at the same time, or when the Kubernetes REST API was slow to respond or applying throttling, session allocation could fail or requests could back up, sometimes surfacing as a database is locked error or as failed or timed out session requests. Updates the training portal makes to Kubernetes are now performed in a way that no longer blocks other session activity while waiting on the Kubernetes API, reducing failed sessions and improving reliability under high traffic.

  • The browser JavaScript bundles for the workshop renderer and gateway applications in the workshop base environment image are now generated using esbuild instead of browserify. This eliminates security alerts arising from the deprecated elliptic package which was an indirect dependency of browserify, but for which no fixed version is available.

  • The default Hugo theme used when rendering workshop instructions has been replaced with a new self contained implementation which no longer depends on JavaScript code generated from the classic renderer. The original theme is still included under the name educates-classic and can be selected by setting the WORKSHOP_RENDERER_THEME environment variable for a workshop to educates-classic if any issues are encountered with the new theme. The recommended way of setting this environment variable is via the env override for a workshop in the TrainingPortal resource definition. The educates-classic theme will be removed in a future version at the same time as the classic renderer is removed.

  • The baseurl short code for the Hugo renderer no longer includes a trailing slash when expanded, so the documented usage of {{<baseurl>}}/path now produces a URL with a single slash. Previously the expansion always ended in a slash, resulting in a repeated slash. Although web servers will generally collapse the repeated slash when workshop instructions are served from a workshop session, in the case of static HTML files generated using educates render-workshop, where URLs are relative to the root, the result was a URL starting with a double slash, which a browser would incorrectly interpret as a scheme relative URL. Note that if workshop instructions relied on the undocumented form {{<baseurl>}}path, without a slash after the short code, they will need to be updated to use the documented form.

  • If a user ends a workshop session, or attempts to return to one, after their training portal login session has already expired, for example after leaving the browser window open for a long period after the workshop session had finished, they are now shown the workshop session finished page rather than being redirected to the portal login page. Previously an expired login in this situation could result in the portal login page being displayed, which was undesirable when workshop sessions are coordinated by a custom front end through the training portal REST API.

  • The helm CLI included in the workshop base environment image has been updated from the 3.x series to 4.x. Helm 4 is a new major release which introduces breaking changes relative to Helm 3, so any workshops which use the helm CLI should be verified against the newer Helm version to ensure they still behave as expected.

  • The set of kubectl versions bundled in the workshop base environment image has changed. The 1.31 and 1.32 versions have been dropped and 1.35 and 1.36 have been added, so the supported range is now 1.33 to 1.36. The kubectl version is still selected automatically to match the Kubernetes cluster the workshop session is connected to. For clusters older than the supported range the oldest bundled version, 1.33, is used, and for clusters newer than the supported range the most recent bundled version, 1.36, is used. Workshops which target clusters running Kubernetes 1.32 or older may therefore see a larger client/server version skew and should be verified against a supported cluster version.

  • The version of kind embedded in the educates CLI has been updated from 0.29 to 0.32. As a result the default Kubernetes version used when creating a local cluster with educates local cluster create has changed from 1.33 to 1.36. A specific node image can still be selected using the --kind-cluster-image option if a different Kubernetes version is required.

Bugs Fixed

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