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Remove system-defined taxonomies, replacing with "read_only" flag - #654

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Remove system-defined taxonomies, replacing with "read_only" flag#654
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braden/remove-system-defined

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@bradenmacdonald bradenmacdonald commented Jul 8, 2026

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Implements #634

  • Remove the "system-defined" taxonomy feature entirely, replacing it with a read_only flag on the base Taxonomy class
  • Remove all taxonomy subclasses and the cast() functionality
  • Remove the built-in "Language Taxonomy" and "User Taxonomy" which weren't useful nor usable. (If the languages taxonomy was actually in use, it gets converted to a regular taxonomy.)

@openedx-webhooks openedx-webhooks added open-source-contribution PR author is not from Axim or 2U core contributor PR author is a Core Contributor (who may or may not have write access to this repo). labels Jul 8, 2026
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openedx-webhooks commented Jul 8, 2026 •
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Thanks for the pull request, @bradenmacdonald!

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@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this to Needs Triage in Contributions Jul 8, 2026
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bradenmacdonald force-pushed the braden/remove-system-defined branch 2 times, most recently from ef4a798 to dfc6079 Compare July 8, 2026 19:29
@mphilbrick211 mphilbrick211 moved this from Needs Triage to Waiting on Author in Contributions Jul 8, 2026
@bradenmacdonald @claude
feat!: remove system-defined taxonomyies, replacing w/ read_only flag
13ea459 
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
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bradenmacdonald force-pushed the braden/remove-system-defined branch from dfc6079 to 13ea459 Compare July 15, 2026 23:37
@bradenmacdonald bradenmacdonald changed the title Remove system-defined taxonomyies, replacing with "read_only" flag Remove system-defined taxonomies, replacing with "read_only" flag Jul 16, 2026
@bradenmacdonald bradenmacdonald mentioned this pull request Jul 16, 2026
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bradenmacdonald marked this pull request as ready for review July 16, 2026 00:35
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bradenmacdonald commented Jul 16, 2026

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@ormsbee (CC @mgwozdz-unicon @jesperhodge): when you have some time, could you please take a look at this PR and the corresponding platform PR?

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jesperhodge commented Jul 27, 2026

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I'll start by sharing Claude Code Review:
"

  1. This PR renames the taxonomy API field system_defined to read_only. The Studio frontend (frontend-app-authoring) still reads system_defined: it uses it to show the "System-level" badge and to hide the Import and Delete menu items for those taxonomies. After the rename the frontend gets no value there, so the badge won't render and those menu items will start appearing for read-only taxonomies. I couldn't find a frontend PR that updates this. I think it breaks the badge and menus in Studio. Could we add a small frontend-app-authoring PR alongside this one to keep them in sync?

  2. This removes several things that are currently part of the public Python API: the LanguageTaxonomy, UserSystemDefinedTaxonomy, and ModelSystemDefinedTaxonomy classes (importable from openedx_tagging.models), plus Taxonomy.cast() and the system_defined property. The README says these APIs are meant for use by plugins, so a plugin could break on upgrade. I don't see a deprecation step or a version change (still 1.1.0). Should this go through the deprecation process and/or a major version bump, or are these treated as internal?

  3. ADRs 0007 and 0008 document the system-defined-taxonomy and auto-tagging features that this PR removes, but they aren't touched here. Would you be open to marking them as superseded, and adding a short ADR describing the new read_only flag?

  4. Migration 0021 handles the built-in "Languages" taxonomy (id -1): if it's in use it's converted to a regular taxonomy, otherwise it's deleted.

On conversion it sets read_only=False, so the language tags become editable by admins, where before they couldn't be changed. Is that the intended result, or should it stay read-only?
On deletion, there's a related TaxonomyOrg row for taxonomy_id=-1 (owned by content_tagging). Does deleting the taxonomy also remove that row? A test that runs the real migration against a database (rather than the pytest-built schema) would confirm it.
"

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