This is a good point. What additional blockers would there be for linking against a user provided library with custom operators?
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 5:16 PM, Barber, Christopher < christopher.bar...@analog.com> wrote: > To avoid this kind of problem, you really need to support features that > allow MXNet to be extended without having to resort to forking. There is > currently no way to add C++ custom operators without forking, and no way to > share such operators across projects. This creates a perverse incentive to > try to get changes that may not belong into the main product. > > On 3/5/18, 6:26 PM, "Marco de Abreu" <marco.g.ab...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > > Hello, > > we recently had a few cases in which it has been attempted to add new > functionality to old branches because a customer of somebodys $DAY_JOB > requested it and was unable to switch to the latest release or that > certain > feature did not make it into the release. This lead to quite a lot of > discussions and there was no clear standing within the community. > > Just to cite semantic versioning: > > 1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes, > 2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a > backwards-compatible > manner, and > 3. PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes. > > > We as a community agreed on following this system and I think we should > either stick to it or drop it entirely - exceptions to SemVer are > usually > discouraged. While I see that adding functionality might be a minor > thing, > I don't think that we should educate our users into expecting us to > backport new features. The development happening on the Apache MXNet > repository should not be influenced by something like this; especially > considering that whoever supports that customer on their $DAY_JOB can > assist them at creating a fork and cherrypicking that feature. But I > don't > see much reason why we're running against best pracitices. One > important > thing to note here is that we're not maintaining CI on old branches and > neither are we making patch releases - so what do these users do? > Compile > off a stale development branch with unvalidated changes? > > In my opinion this whole topic is just causing trouble and > fragementation > on our end. If a features doesn't make it into the release (for > whatever > reason), so be it. But I think we should discuss this topic and > emphasize a > no-exceptions-rule to SemVer. > > Best regards, > Marco > > >
