I can see certain benefits to such a separation, mainly for folks interested only in the bindings, but if I'm honest I'm not sure those outweigh the additional complication it seems it may bring in some of the other areas.
The python bindings are slightly more interesting than the others due to being at the heart of the python based tests that exist for proton-c and proton-j, so splitting them out actually creates a bit of a circular dependency with proton / its tests (especially when having the submodules in both repos). You mentioned thinking we wouldn't need to track the binding within the proton tree (but could do so to prevent a breaking change for existing things), and instead use an installed version of the bindings. In practice I guess it would be about the same in terms of updating proton-c and the bindings and the related python-based tests at the same time (adding an install, or possibly two, in the middle). Releasing (in terms of source, here at Apache) seems like it would become more 'interesting' though, with potential again for the bindings needing proton-c (+proton-j) updates, but proton-c (+proton-j) needing the bindings updates for updated tests. I guess that might point to splitting the python tests out on their own as well so it depended on both separately. Perhaps I'm overthinking this though; how would you see some of those things working? I also can't say that I'd be a particular fan of using submodules, most of the things I've read about or tried with them have been a turnoff...but I'm mostly skipping over that for now. Robbie On 18 August 2015 at 08:17, Flavio Percoco <fla...@redhat.com> wrote: > Greetings, > > I'd like to take a chance, now that 0.10 is out, to make a point in > favor of using submodules rather than having all bindings in the same > repository. > > I think qpid-proton has reached the point where it's mature enough to > have some of the bindings promoted to having their own repos. More > importantly, I believe these bindings are mature enough and ready to > build a community on their own. > > Lets take the python bindings, for instance. I've been contributing to > the python bindings quite a bit in the last couple of months. The > bindings went from depending on cmake for tests to having their own, > still dependant on proton-test, test suite that is self-maintained. > > Furthermore, the python bindings went from depending on cmake to be > built to being self-built using python's internal build system. It's > still possible - and in fact, it still happens - to build these > drivers running cmake, although it's, in my personal opinion, not > recommended. > > As you can see from the above, the python bindings depend on proton-c > but they don't need to live in the same codebase. Therefore, I've > prepared a small POC to show case this repo structure: > > - https://github.com/FlaPer87/test-python-qpid-proton > > The above repo contains the python-qpid-proton code. As you can tell > from the commit history, not many changes were required to set it up. > The relevant bits of this repo, I believe, are the ones related to the > submodule. The qpid-proton submodule points qpid-proton's master > branch in the test-python-qpid-proton branch, whereas in the 0.10 > branch, it tracks qpid-proton's 0.10.x. This is important for the > bindings to keep track of the right code/release/tests. > > - https://github.com/FlaPer87/qpid-proton/tree/submodules > > The above is a fork of the qpid-proton repo we use already but rather > than having the python-qpid-bindings in tree, it just tracks the > master branch. (I created a `submodules` branch because I didn't want > to mess with the master branch in my fork). > > I don't think tracking the binding in the qpid-proton repo is > necessary but I see how it's useful to avoid introducing breaking > changes on drivers. To be more precise, I don't think the above is > necessary because if we are testing bindings in cmake to make sure we > don't break backwards compatibility, we could simply install the > latest stable version and test against that, rather than testing > against the latest binding's master, which could, but shouldn't, be > broken. > > I wouldn't probably advocate for the above to applied to every binding > we have since some of them might not be ready for this but I > definitely want to advocate to make this happen for the python binding > (and other bindings). > > This structure will make it easier to mainting bindings, to build a > community around these bindings - I contribute more to the python > binding than proton-c. It'll also help keeping a clean history for > each project and to issue binding releases, therefore creating > tags for bindings, as needed. > > I get it's worked well so far and probably some of you won't be happy > with this proposal but, git is powerful enough to support the above > structure, which is ideal for these kind of projects. Correct me if > I'm wrong but I believe the current structure also comes from the old > times when qpid-proton used to be in subversion. > > Hope the above makes sense and I'm sorry for such a long email, I > should've drunk less coffee. > Flavio > > P.S: I'm more than happy to help setting this up and to bring it back > if the experiment fails. > > -- > @flaper87 > Flavio Percoco
