Open Stack

Andreas Jaeger <aj at suse.com> wrote:

> TL;DR: Projects can use bindep.txt to document in a programmatic way
> their binary dependencies
>
> Python developers record their dependencies on other Python packages in
> requirements.txt and test-requirements.txt. But some packages
> havedependencies outside of python and we should document
> thesedependencies as well so that operators, developers, and CI systems
> know what needs to be available for their programs.
>
> Bindep is a solution to this, it allows a repo to document
> binarydependencies in a single file. It even enablies specification of
> which distribution the package belongs to - Debian, Fedora, Gentoo,
> openSUSE, RHEL, SLES and Ubuntu have different package names - and
> allows profiles, like a test profile.
>
> Bindep is one of the tools the OpenStack Infrastructure team has written
> and maintains. It is in use by already over 130 repositories.
>
> For better bindep adoption, in the just released bindep 2.1.0 we have
> changed the name of the default file used by bindep from
> other-requirements.txt to bindep.txt and have pushed changes [3] to
> master branches of repositories for this.
>
> Projects are encouraged to create their own bindep files. Besides
> documenting what is required, it also gives a speedup in running tests
> since you install only what you need and not all packages that some
> other project might need and are installed  by default. Each test system
> comes with a basic installation and then we either add the repo defined
> package list or the large default list.
>
> In the OpenStack CI infrastructure, we use the "test" profile for
> installation of packages. This allows projects to document their run
> time dependencies - the default packages - and the additional packages
> needed for testing.
>
> Be aware that bindep is not used by devstack based tests, those have
> their own way to document dependencies.
>
> A side effect is that your tests run faster, they have less packages to
> install. A Ubuntu Xenial test node installs 140 packages and that can
> take between 2 and 5 minutes. With a smaller bindep file, this can change.
>
> Let's look at the log file for a normal installation with using the
> default dependencies:
> 2 upgraded, 139 newly installed, 0 to remove and 41 not upgraded
> Need to get 148 MB of archives.
> After this operation, 665 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>
> Compare this with the openstack-manuals repostiry that uses bindep -
> this example was 20 seconds and not minutes:
> 0 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 43 not upgraded.
> Need to get 35.8 MB of archives.
> After this operation, 128 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>
> If you want to learn more about bindep, read the Infra Manual on package
> requirements [1] or the bindep manual [2].
>
> If you have further questions about bindep, feel free to ask the Infra
> team on #openstack-infra.
>
> Thanks to Anita for reviewing and improving this blog post and to the
> OpenStack Infra team that maintains bindep, especially to Jeremy Stanley
> and Robert Collins.
>
> Note I'm sending this out while not all our test clouds have images that
> know about bindep.txt (they only handle other-requirements.txt). The
> infra team is in the process of ensuring updated images in all our test
> clouds for later today. Thanks, Paul!
>
> Andreas
>
>
> References:
> [1]  
> http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/drivers.html#package-requirements
> [2] http://docs.openstack.org/infra/bindep/
> [3] https://review.openstack.org/#/q/branch:master+topic:bindep-mv
> —

I went and sent a strawman patch for neutron to adopt bindep.txt:

https://review.openstack.org/#/c/381906/

When I execute 'bindep test’ locally, I get the following error on  
centos7.2 which is expected:

Bad versions of installed packages:
     sqlite version 3.7.17-8.el7 does not match >=3.8

I would think that this output is passed to apt-get in the gate. But then I  
see the following failure in gate:

http://logs.openstack.org/06/381906/3/check/gate-neutron-pep8-ubuntu-xenial/148dcd8/console.html#_2016-10-04_15_57_36_846699

Apparently, bindep tool failed to parse the file on that other platform?

Can anyone help me to understand what I’m missing?

Ihar