Open Stack

On 03/10/2016 11:48 AM, Beth Elwell wrote:
> 
>> On 10 Mar 2016, at 07:46, Richard Jones <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com
>> <mailto:r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>     It has been mentioned, xstatic packages can block the gate. We
>>     currently
>>     control xstatic package releases, thus we can roll back, if something
>>     goes wrong.
>>
>>     If we're pulling directly with npm/bower, someone from the outside can
>>     break us. We already have the situation with pypi packages.
>>     With proper packages, we could even use the gate to release those
>>     packages and thus verify, we're not breaking anyone.
>>
>>
>> We're going to have potential breakage (gate breakage, in the
>> integrated tests) any time we release a package (regardless of release
>> mechanism) and have to update two separate repositories resulting in
>> out-of-sync version specification and expectation (ie.
>> upper-constraints specification and Horizon's code expectation) as
>> described in my OP. The only solution that we're aware of is to
>> synchronise updating those two things, through one of the mechanisms
>> proposed so far (or possibly through a mechanism not yet proposed.)
> 
> If we will anyway have potential breakage I don’t understand why the
> better solution here would not be to just use the bower and npm tools

We control the breakages, and we're trying to find a solution (if you
didn't notice, many where proposed in this thread).

> which are standardised for JavaScript

They are a *very bad* standard which doesn't work at all with downstream
distributions. Unless someone adds a system wide registry for javascript
(the say way that if you apt-get a Python package, pip wont download
it), then we can't use it.

> and would move Horizon more
> towards using widely recognised tooling

Recognized by who? Certainly not downstream distributions. This is a
nightmare.

> from within not just Openstack
> but the wider development community.

What community are you talking about? That JavaScript community which
breaks APIs every 2 weeks? Please re-read this:

https://github.com/openstack/horizon/blob/master/doc/source/topics/packaging.rst

and especially the part:
"Why we use XStatic"

We have every few months some Horizon contributors advocating for
pushing toward this direction, however, none have yet shown a way to
solve what Xstatic does. Until this is done, please refrain from writing:

"hey, everyone uses X, so let's do the same"

without valid technical argumentation.

Yes, using npm / bower / gulp / you-name-it, may make your Horizon
contributor life easier. But that's *not* the only thing to consider.

> Back versions always need to be
> supported for a time, however I would add that long term this could end
> up saving time and create a stable longer term solution.

Long term, I would like to see more contributions to the upstream
JavaScript tooling to make it behave reasonably. Until this is done, we
can't use it.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)