[libvirt] [PATCH glib] README: formally document intended platform support targets

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) zeeshanak at gnome.org
Wed Jul 22 13:54:17 UTC 2015


On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
> Give users an indication of what distro platforms the project
> intends to be buildable on. This policy will be used to decide
> when it is appropriate to increase the minimum required versions
> of external dependancies.

While this sounds like a good idea at first, being so specific about
versions makes it a very bad one IMO. i-e this list will get outdated
all the time and none of us will remember to update it often enough
for it to be useful.

Also IMO selecting a few downstreams isn't a good idea in upstream
project. We really should be distro-agnostic and libosinfo should be
buildable on any GNU/Linux distro. The idea here is to convey the
message "We do care a lot about individual distros" but unless this
list is a long one, we are actually saying "We only care of these
distros".

As I said before, I think we only need to define a time frame in
upstream (i-e we guarantee we won't bump any dep to anything newer
than X amount of time) and be done with it. No need to focus on any
particular distros, just provide enough time for distros. In worse
case, they'd have to cherry-pick fixes from newer version of software,
which is what long-term support downstream typically imply anyway.

> Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com>
> ---
>  README | 65 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------
>  1 file changed, 53 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/README b/README
> index 3108e3c..3547089 100644
> --- a/README
> +++ b/README
> @@ -26,18 +26,59 @@ The latest official releases can be found at:
>  NB: at this time, libvirt-glib is *NOT* considered API/ABI stable. Future
>  releases may still include API/ABI incompatible changes.
>
> -Dependencies
> -============
> -
> -- Required:
> -  - glib-2.0
> -  - gobject-2.0
> -  - libxml-2.0
> -  - libvirt
> -
> -- Optional:
> -  - gobject-introspection
> -  - Vala (build-time only)
> +Dependencies / supported platforms
> +==================================
> +
> +The libvirt-glib projects attempts to be moderately conservative
> +about updating the minimum required versions of external package
> +dependencies, to strike a balance between enabling use of new
> +features while minimizing inconvenience for downstream developers
> +on distro platforms with specific shipped version.
> +
> +There are commonly two classes of Linux distro - short lifetime
> +(Fedora, Ubuntu non-LTS, etc) and extended lifetime (RHEL, CentOS,
> +Debian, Ubuntu LTS). Based on this classification, the libvirt-glib
> +project will generally aim to ensure build support for
> +
> + - Most recent 2 releases of short lifetime distros
> + - Most recent major release of extended lifetime distros,
> +   with most recent 2 minor updates
> +
> +The project will consider RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu LTS, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE
> +and SUSE (SLES/SLED) distros to be a representative subset of distros
> +when determining min required versions of external deps, as other distros
> +of similar release vintage will typically have similar versions. In the
> +case of Debian, the project may at times choose to require use of an
> +update from the backports repository.
> +
> +As an example, as of July 1st 2015 this policy would imply that the
> +following distros are officially targetted as buildable platforms:
> +
> + - RHEL: 7.1, 7.2
> + - Fedora: 21, 22
> + - Ubuntu LTS: 14.04 (Trusty)
> + - Ubuntu: 14.10 (Utopic), 15.04 (Vivid)
> + - Suse: 12.0
> + - OpenSUSE: 13.1, 13.2
> + - Debian: 8.0 (Jessie)
> +
> +At any time, it may be possible to build on versions of distros
> +that are older than those implied by this policy, but the project
> +will not guarantee this remains the case in future releases. The
> +min required package versions of external dependancies may be
> +raised in future releases based on this distro build target policy.
> +
> +The packages required to build libvirt-glib are
> +
> + - glib-2.0
> + - gobject-2.0
> + - libxml-2.0
> + - libvirt
> +
> +Functionality is optionally enhanced by the following packages:
> +
> + - gobject-introspection
> + - Vala (build-time only)
>
>  Patches sumissions
>  ==================
> --
> 2.4.3
>
> --
> libvir-list mailing list
> libvir-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list



-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
________________________________________
Befriend GNOME: http://www.gnome.org/friends/




More information about the libvir-list mailing list