Opened at 2011-07-28T04:07:58Z
Last modified at 2021-03-30T18:41:12Z
#1452 new defect
clarify policy about what versions of dependencies Tahoe-LAFS requires — at Initial Version
| Reported by: | zooko | Owned by: | somebody |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | major | Milestone: | soon |
| Component: | packaging | Version: | 1.8.2 |
| Keywords: | packaging setuptools exocet testing | Cc: | |
| Launchpad Bug: |
Description
There are conflicting ideas about how tight the requirements Tahoe-LAFS should place on dependencies (in src/allmydata/_auto_deps.py). One way to do it would to be require versions of dependencies which we know work with Tahoe-LAFS (i.e. they don't have any critical bugs that are triggered by the way Tahoe-LAFS uses them nor fatal incompatibilities with Tahoe-LAFS or other code that Tahoe-LAFS uses). This would be the tightest policy. The other extreme—the loosest policy—is to allow any version unless we know for sure that particular version has a critical bug or incompatibility.
I personally find it a bit dubious if we specify that Tahoe-LAFS requires a version of Package X greater than or equal to Version N, if we don't have any buildbots that have Version N installed. To me that sounds like we are claiming that Tahoe-LAFS will work with Version N of Package X, but making that claim without reproducible evidence that it is true. On the other hand we can just rely on the absence of any bug reports from the field which can be traced to a bug or incompatibility in some version of one of our dependencies.
One possible future improvement would be to automate the testing of Tahoe-LAFS combined with different versions of dependencies. The exocet tool looks like it might facilitate that sort of work: Exocet: A Second Look
In the meantime, let's write down a policy on our Wiki and close this ticket.
Another option would be to choose a set of operating systems/distributions that we think we should support and specify the versions of the dependencies which are provided in those. Currently we have the following operating systems/distributions in the Supported Builders category of our buildbot herd: Windows 7 x86_64, Debian 5 "Lenny" ("obsolete stable") x86_64, Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid" x86_64, Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick" x86_64, Debian 5 "Lenny" ("obsolete stable") x86, FreeBSD 8.2 x86_64, OpenBSD 4.8 x86_64, NetBSD 5 x86, CentOS 5 (RedHat 5.6) x86, Windows XP 5.1 SP 3 x86.
