Hi Andy, Regarding: > I don't think the versioning data nodes is a good idea. > I have seen entire REST APIs be versioned, but not individual parameters > within the API. > How do you version the must/when/path references from other objects that > point at the data node? > Sounds way too complex to manage.
The YANG packages and version selection drafts both propose that the entire API is versioned. In fact it regards IETF models, vs OpenConfig models, vs Native vendor models as separate APIs. Thanks, Rob From: Andy Bierman <a...@yumaworks.com> Sent: 20 March 2019 13:48 To: Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwil...@cisco.com> Cc: Martin Bjorklund <m...@tail-f.com>; kent+i...@watsen.net; netmod@ietf.org Subject: Re: [netmod] adoption poll for yang-versioning-reqs-02 On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 4:54 AM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwil...@cisco.com<mailto:rwil...@cisco.com>> wrote: Hi Andy, Thanks for the comments. 1. Regular Semver 2.0.0 (as per semver.org<http://semver.org>) allows some branching. I.e. you can create version 2.0.0 based of version 1.1.0, and then subsequently create version 1.2.0 based of 1.1.0. So structure wise this would logically look like: 1.0.0 | \ | 1.1.0 – 1.2.0 - … | 2.0.0 | I also raised https://github.com/semver/semver/issues/504 on the semver 2.0.0 github to confirm that my interpretation is correct, and no one has disputed it yet. The numbering may allow it, but it is not really being used that way. I don't think the YANG standard needs to support branching in this way. 2. Vendor software releases can have a very long support time (e.g. easily 5+ years), with an expectation that bugs get fixed. Requiring that customers upgrade their software (or perhaps hardware) to the very latest software version to pick up a small bug fix is not realistic. This is primarily why I think that the ‘m’ and ‘M’ are so important. They allow for bug fixes in a way that Semver 2.0.0 simply does not. Semver 2.0.0 only allows for bugfixes in the implementation (by updating the patch version number), but has the expectation that there are *never* any non-backwards-compatible changes in the API, not even to fix a bug, except at the tip of the development tree. In short, I think that vanilla Semver 2.0.0 is a good fit for open source projects where you can just tell the client to update to the latest version to pick up the fix. I don’t think that Semver 2.0.0 is so well aligned to APIs that are required to be maintained for long periods of time. The alternative that Rob Shakir mentioned at IETF 103 in the context of OpenConfig, which uses strict Semver 2.0.0, is to handle these bug fixes using deviations. But it seems to be significantly more complex to manage bug fixes using extra deviation modules rather than allowing the ‘m’ | ‘M’ modifiers. Versioning would no longer limited to a module version number, but require knowledge of the module version and set of deviations that are applied to it. I would rather deviations are reserved to indicate whether an implementation doesn’t match the module specification rather than use them as a way of fixing bugs in the specification itself. I agree that deviations should be used instead of branching. You can cherry-pick features from the latest very easily with deviations. IMO it is more accurate to say the implementation supports version X minus some features, rather than assigning some version string to mean the same thing. This approach can get out of control very quickly if multiple independent release trains exist. I prefer a linear development progression, and each implementation will identity its functionality the same way. 3. I agree that the use of Semver + packages + version selection does not reduce the overall number of paths to a configurable property, but it does ensure that there is only a single path to a configurable property within a YANG datastore schema. So whichever version each client is using, they only use a single path. I.e. mirroring the way that a classic programming API might be versioned. Servers that wish to support this would have to map the data between different YANG datastore schema versions. Not all mappings are possible, but at least any cases where it is not possible can be detected and reported to the client via an out of band mechanism. If the module content changes significantly between module versions that mapping will be much harder than if the changes are minimal or backwards compatible. So there is still a strong incentive for model writers to minimize churn to the YANG models. I don't think the versioning data nodes is a good idea. I have seen entire REST APIs be versioned, but not individual parameters within the API. How do you version the must/when/path references from other objects that point at the data node? Sounds way too complex to manage. Thanks, Rob Andy From: Andy Bierman <a...@yumaworks.com<mailto:a...@yumaworks.com>> Sent: 19 March 2019 18:35 To: Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwil...@cisco.com<mailto:rwil...@cisco.com>> Cc: Martin Bjorklund <m...@tail-f.com<mailto:m...@tail-f.com>>; kent+i...@watsen.net<mailto:kent%2bi...@watsen.net>; netmod@ietf.org<mailto:netmod@ietf.org> Subject: Re: [netmod] adoption poll for yang-versioning-reqs-02 On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 9:38 AM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwil...@cisco.com<mailto:rwil...@cisco.com>> wrote: Hi Martin, Thanks for the review and comments. A couple of points: 1) Lots of models outside those published in SDOs are already not following the RFC 7950 revision rules. I think that it is better to have a versioning scheme that reflects how YANG models are actually evolving rather than have all vendor and OC YANG modules either just ignoring the rules, or using clever tricks that strictly conform with the rules but go against the spirit of them (e.g. just publish an entirely new set of YANG modules for each release). Also noting that having a scheme that allows non-backwards-compatible changes does not require that everyone uses them - IETF could continue to always publish backwards compatible modules. The obvious alternative here is that each vendor comes up with their own versioning extension and ignores the RFC 7950 section 11 rules anyway, but I'm not sure how that really helps client<->server interop. I do not support branching for YANG models so I do not supported modified SEMVER. Adding a special character to the version string doesn't help the deployed client code that stops working when the server code is upgraded. This is a quality issue that each organization has to deal with the best they can. I do not object to the addition of a SEMVER field to a YANG module because these version strings are familiar to users. It is possible to express import ranges such as 1.2.* (any 1.2.x release) which are not possible with date strings. 2) I don't understand how the RFC 7950 approach of "deprecate a buggy node, and replace with a working node" really works in practice, particularly for configuration data nodes where you have two clients interacting with a server, one interacting with the old path, and another using the new path. Perhaps there is a robust scheme that works in all cases, but it isn't obvious to me. Historically, for CLI we just translate the CLI from old to new format and then return the new format when the running config is requested. But that will still break an old client that doesn't understand how to read the new CLI, even if the server supports them writing via the old CLI. SEMVER does not reduce the number of paths to the underlying configuration object. That problem does not change whether a new XPath absolute-path-expr is used or whether the same path is overloaded with semantics derived from additional protocol parameters (e.g., versioning of each data node). I prefer the existing XPath solution because it is explicit so the YANG reader can easily see the multiple paths, and no new protocol work needed to support it. If there is an NBC change to an object then all XPath and leafref references to it will probably break. That seems like a harder problem to solve than the original path duplication problem. Even if there is a workable solution for this simple case, I suspect that there are many slightly more complicated cases that don't work (e.g. rekeying a list, changing defaults, incompatible types). In short, I don't agree with the premise that the current YANG versioning schema using revision dates is working just fine, and no changes are needed. Thanks, Rob Andy -----Original Message----- From: netmod <netmod-boun...@ietf.org<mailto:netmod-boun...@ietf.org>> On Behalf Of Martin Bjorklund Sent: 19 March 2019 15:12 To: kent+i...@watsen.net<mailto:kent%2bi...@watsen.net> Cc: netmod@ietf.org<mailto:netmod@ietf.org> Subject: Re: [netmod] adoption poll for yang-versioning-reqs-02 Hi, I have read this document, and I do not think it should be adopted. I object to the idea that we should allow non-backwards-compatible changes to published YANG modules. The draft motivates this idea with: we must recognize that many YANG modules are actually generated YANG modules (for example, from internal databases) I do not agree that we should change what we allow in published modules b/c of this. It also motivates this idea with: The points made above lead to the logical conclusion that the standardized YANG modules have to be perfect on day one (at least the structure and meaning), which in turn might explain why IETF YANG modules take so long to standardize. I disagree with this. First of all, we have already published revision two of several YANG modules (ietf-inet-types, ietf-yang-type, ietf-interfaces, ietf-ip, ietf-routing, ...), so the statement that "standardized YANG modules have to be perfect on day one" is simply not true. Second, I don't think the upgrade rules are the reason it takes a long time to standardize IETF models (I think it has to do with the process itself, including the fact that models get reviews from many different people with different background.) [BTW, is it true that drafts with YANG models take longer time from wg -00 to published RFC than other drafts?] This said, I think there are some important points that the draft raises, and that I think we should continue to work on; specifically 2.3, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7. But I don't think that these areas require changes to the versioning scheme, and I think it is a mistake to include these areas in this draft. Some comments on section 4, The Problem Statement: o Any non-backwards-compatible change of a definition requires either a new module name or a new path. This has been found costly to support in implementations, in particular on the client side. Yes I agree there is a cost associated with this. But I have come across vendor modules that make NBC changes w/o introducing a new path, and this is also costly to handle. o Since non-backwards-compatible changes require either a new module name or a new path, such changes will impact other modules that import definitions. In fact, with the current module versioning scheme other modules have to opt-in in order to use the new version. This essentially leads to a ripple effect where a non- backwards-compatible change of a core module causes updates on a potentially large number of dependent modules. This is by design. We cannot have a situation where a legal modification to a module leads to other modules becoming invalid. o YANG has a mechanism to mark definitions deprecated but it leaves it open whether implementations are expected to implement deprecated definitions and there is no way (other than trial and error) for a client to find out whether deprecated definitions are supported by a given implementation. As I wrote above, I agree that this is a problem that should be solved. But this is not a motivation for changing YANG versioning. o YANG does not have a robust mechanism to document which data definitions have changed and to provide guidance how implementations should deal with the change. While it is possible to have this described in general description statements, having these details embedded in general description statements does not make this information accessible to tools. This might also be worth exploring, but this is not a motivation for changing YANG versioning. /martin Kent Watsen <kent+i...@watsen.net<mailto:kent%2bi...@watsen.net>> wrote: > Seeing as how we all need to read this draft anyways, in preparation for our > meeting in Prague, it seems like a good time for this poll. Thusly, this > email begins a 1-week adoption poll for: > > > https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-verdt-netmod-yang-versioning-reqs-02 > <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-verdt-netmod-yang-versioning-reqs-0 > 2> > > Please voice your support or objections before March 20. > > Note that this draft defines *requirements* and its intended status is > "Informational." I believe that it is good for WGs to formalize > requirements, even taking such drafts thru Last Call, in order to ensure > consensus on the requirements. This is the "adoption" call, to ascertain if > the WG agrees with that statement; if adopted, a separate "last call" will be > issued to ensure to correctness of the draft's content. > > Kent (and Lou and Joel) > > _______________________________________________ netmod mailing list netmod@ietf.org<mailto:netmod@ietf.org> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod _______________________________________________ netmod mailing list netmod@ietf.org<mailto:netmod@ietf.org> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
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