Begin Rails 8.0 upgrade

[cycomachead]

General Info

• Pivotal Tracker Story
• Breaking?

Changes

Begins the Rails 8.0 upgrade, bumping from Rails 7.2 to 8.0.5. This follows the standard incremental upgrade pattern — config.load_defaults remains at 7.2 for now, with new 8.0 defaults available to opt into one at a time via the new framework defaults initializer.

Dependency bump

• Gemfile: rails ~> 7.2.3.1 → ~> 8.0.2 (resolved to 8.0.5 in lockfile)

Incremental defaults adoption

• Added config/initializers/new_framework_defaults_8_0.rb with Rails 8.0 defaults commented out, to be enabled and verified one at a time before flipping config.load_defaults to 8.0

Code changes required by Rails 8

• Migrated strong parameters from params.require(...).permit(...) to params.expect(...) in CourseSettingsController, FormSettingsController, and RequestsController — aligns with the Rails 8 idiom enforced by rubocop-rails's Rails/StrongParametersExpect cop
• Updated two RSpec assertions in the API controller specs to match Rails 8's updated ParameterMissing error message ("...or invalid: ..." suffix added)

New Rails 8 generated file

• Added public/400.html Bad Request error page

Testing

• RSpec: 409 examples, 0 failures
• Cucumber (rack_test): 16 scenarios, 158 steps — all pass
• Rubocop: 139 files, 0 offenses
• Brakeman: 0 warnings
• App boots cleanly in development, test, and production environments on Rails 8.0.5

Documentation

No documentation changes required. Follow-up PRs will incrementally enable the new 8.0 framework defaults and eventually set config.load_defaults 8.0.

Checklist

• Name of branch corresponds to story

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Superconductor Ticket Implementation | App Preview | Guided Review