[Splitting this out of the original thread which was the Facter 2.2.0 announcement.]
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:58 AM, David Schmitt <da...@dasz.at> wrote: > On 2014-08-28 00:51, Kylo Ginsberg wrote: > >> But going forward there's a question about how to handle changes to fact >> *values*. One proposal is that we identify (and of course test against) >> some essential facts that we "care a lot about" (such as >> 'lsbmajdistrelease") and set some rules, like: >> >> (a) we do not change those in x.y.Z releases >> (b) we highlight it when they DO change in x.Y or X releases >> > > > Strict semver would suggest that (major) changes to values be marked with > an increment in the major version. > > There are a couple really good issues here, and I'm torn on the answers: 1) While semver clearly applies to the Facter *API*, I'm not sure if it provides guidance on Facter *values*. Yes, on the one hand, I could argue that the values are part of the Facter contract, but that seems like a contortion of "API". I incline toward treating semver as API-only. 2) More importantly, a strict reading of semver as applied to facts would tie our hands (or force more rapid majors). E.g. I add fact 'foo' in 3.0, and it turns out to work great on RHEL but is incoherent on, say, Windows. But it's now out in the wild, so if I'm completely strict about changes we have to leave it be until 4.0, although that may mean that more and more Windows users painfully write manifests around the 3.0 behavior. It's roughly (hand wave) that sort of consideration that led to the idea floated above of define some "major" facts (and platforms) where we make guarantees. To tie (1) and (2) together, there's a case to be made for separating Facter's API guarantees from its fact value guarantees, and perhaps even to tiering the latter. The exact details are up for discussion of course. Thoughts? (And regardless, we should add a VERSIONING.md to the facter project so we have a thought-out statement on the subject.) Kylo -- Kylo Ginsberg k...@puppetlabs.com *Join us at PuppetConf 2014 <http://www.puppetconf.com/>, September 20-24 in San Francisco* *Register by September 8th to take advantage of the Final Countdown <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/puppetconf-2014-tickets-7666774529?discount=FinalCountdown> * *—**save $149!* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-dev/CALsUZFEAkxiWg70mH7cTu3TbqSd39PwGRrr0hW3invBkC6Vrjw%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
