[Zope3-dev] Re: Known working sets II [was: Eggification redux]

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

> >We have a situation where we have developers, not maintainers, uploading
> >new versions of packages. There will be no integrated testing done for
> >all software built on all packages in the cheeseshop. Again, I can see
> >similarities, but I don't believe linux distributions have *exactly* our
> >problems solved. Our buildouts are used as development environments, not
> >  only deployment environments.
>
> Yes, we have less control over what is released on PyPI than a Linux
> distributor.
> But, you have control over what components your project depends on -- and
> you can select components based on underlying release care.
> Okay, you can also fix the dependency and thus skip careless releases...

Exactly. I guess what I mean to say is that we're like mini
distribution makers, we're not like users of distributions. Well,
we're sort of both, as PyPI is a extremely messy "distribution of
sorts". We also typically have more than one mini distribution we
maintain, while a Linux distro typically maintains only a few versions
of the same large pool of packages.

The selection is currently what I'm complaining about; we want
stability *plus* the flexibility to deviate from this stability when
we want to.

> >Sticking to stable versions helps, until a new stable version is
> >released. Then all the old stuff suddenly starts using the *new* stable
> >version, and probably break.
>
> You must have far worse experiences than I have.
> My components usually work across many releases with
> only very rare need to intervene (Five twice broke one of my
> products; I think that almost was it).

I think the problem will be reduced if you stick to stable releases.
It won't go away: when a new major release of even one of the
dependencies comes along, things might break. I want to avoid the
whole situation of things breaking that used to work.

Anyway, I think we're talking about two different topics:

* better release management

* my pet peeve: if I do release something today, it should work
tomorrow, no matter what new releases happen of the dependencies. This
should also work for frameworks where people build code on the
framework I release.

Regards,

Martijn