Hi folks, One of the key features that we are adding to Glance with the introduction of Artifacts is the ability to have multiple versions of the same object in the repository: this gives us the possibility to query for the latest version of something, keep track on the changes history, and build various continuous delivery solutions on top of Artifact Repository.
We need to determine the format and rules we will use to define, increment and compare versions of artifacts in the repository. There are two alternatives we have to choose from, and we are seeking advice on this choice. First, there is Semantic Versioning specification, available at [1]. It is a very generic spec, widely used and adopted in many areas of software development. It is quite straightforward: 3 mandatory numeric components for version number, plus optional string labels for pre-release versions and build metadata. And then there is PEP-440 spec, which is a "recommended approach to identifying versions and specifying dependencies when distributing Python". It is a "pythonic" way to set versions of python packages, including PIP version strings. Conceptually PEP-440 and Semantic Versioning are similar in purpose, but slightly different in syntax. Notably, the count of version number components and rules of version precedence resolution differ between PEP-440 and SemVer. Unfortunately, the two version string formats are not compatible, so we have to choose one or the other. According to my initial vision, the Artifact Repository should be as generic as possible in terms of potential adoption. The artifacts were never supposed to be python packages only, and even the projects which will create and use these artifacts are not mandatory limited to be pythonic, the developers of that projects may not be python developers! So, I'd really wanted to avoid any python-specific notations, such as PEP-440 for artifacts. I've put this vision into a spec [3] which also contains a proposal on how to convert the semver-compatible version strings into the comparable values which may be mapped to database types, so a database table may be queried, ordered and filtered by the object version. So, we need some feedback on this topic. Would you prefer artifacts to be versioned with SemVer or with PEP-440 notation? Are you interested in having some generic utility which will map versions (in either format) to database columns? If so, which version format would you prefer? We are on a tight schedule here, as we want to begin landing artifact-related code soon. So, I would appreciate your feedback during this week: here in the ML or in the comments to [3] review. Thanks! [1] www.semver.org [2] www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0440/ [3] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/139595/ -- Regards, Alexander Tivelkov __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
