[hibernate-dev] Explaining versioning and dependency compatibility

[Sanne Grinovero]

Good point on OGM' s need for a specific micro. We could propose a 4.4
series of ORM after you finish defining the integration point? So OGM
x.Final will be able to depend on a more reasonable version range.

About BOM files, I'm just skeptical as I don't see how we should
maintain and test them:
- would we update some separate BOM project at every release?
- would you re-run the testsuite of each and all projects at every BOM
update overriding the testsuite versions to make sure it's a valid
combination? (how to automate?)
- I'd also expect some integration tests to actually verify the
correctness of the BOM file (e.g. syntax)

Also the documented dependency ranges on the website could need some
testing in a perfect world, but:
a) I'd expect it to be simpler as it' s a smaller matrix if each
project documents its own dependencies only
b) each project somehow "is aware" if when it breaks compatibility
with older dependencies, like you notice now with OGM: it's an
explicit step you just have to remember to document (and rare enough
so that I wouldn't bother too much to automate).
c) *Personal opinion* I feel like a statement about *expected
compatibility* does create a lower expectation in terms of accuracy
than a BOM file, so that I wouldn't expect need for actual QA on this
subject as much as I would expect it on BOM files which we would
officially distribute.

I'm not strictly against BOM but it sounds like taking a lot of our
bandwidth for a minor practical improvement.


Ultimately we should be very aware that our modules are in constant
change, and people mixing our latest are aware of a little bit of risk
in using latest as there is a mismatch between our expectations vs our
capacity to test and deliver a single unified platform, I think that's
more something for assemblies such as WildFly, JBoss EAP, Spring, and
whoever else redistributes our jars as a combination. We should be
ready to provide recommendations (as what we expect to work) to the
people making these distributions and our users but.. would you
consider untested BOM files to be good for that?

Sanne


On 14 July 2014 11:21, Gunnar Morling <gunnar at hibernate.org> wrote:
> 2014-07-13 14:47 GMT+02:00 Sanne Grinovero <sanne at hibernate.org>:
>
>> I've been explaining $subject to a forum user [1]. I'm confident it's
>> only a problem for newcomers, but are we expecting more expert
>> developers to pass this lore by word of mouth?
>
>
> Not so sure whether it's not a problem for expert users as well every now
> and then.
>
> Looking at OGM for instance, we're currently in the situation that we depend
> on a specific micro version of ORM (4.3.6 once it's out), which may be a
> surprising fact. Personally, I think it'd be rational for a user to expect
> compatibility based on minor version families of our projects, e.g. that
> each OGM 4.1.x release is compatible with each ORM 4.3.x release.
>
> As we can't guarantee this due to the rapid evolvement atm. (e.g. we add new
> SPIs in ORM micro releases for the sake of OGM), some clear documentation is
> highly desirable.
>
>> I think we should add an explanation on these on the website but I'm
>> not sure where this would be more appropriate to present.
>>
>> Should we highlight compatible versions of other integration points on
>> each sub section?
>> For example I could edit the Search area to mention which versions of
>> ORM, OGM, Lucene, Validator, Envers, Infinispan(we might have two
>> different ones!), Commons Annotations, etc.. are supposed to work for
>> each release.
>
>
> Documenting the matching/required versions of upstream projects in each
> project area may be one way. E.g. Search could document its requirements,
> OGM its own etc. I don't think Search should document any expectations
> towards OGM versions as the dependency is the other way around?
>
> Speaking in Maven terms, I still think that providing this information in
> form of bill-of-materials POMs would be the approach most helpful to users.
> Such project BOM would contain the versions of all its components and
> dependencies. Users would reference this BOM using the "import" scope in
> their dependency management configuration and thus get matching versions
> when declaring a dependency to any of the artifacts listed in the BOM.
>
> I vaguely remember though that in the past there had been reservations
> towards providing such BOMs?
>
> @Davide, I've created https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/OGM-574 to do
> this for OGM; Shall we give it a try?
>
> --Gunnar
>
>
>>
>> [1] https://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1035292
>>
>> -- Sanne
>> _______________________________________________
>> hibernate-dev mailing list
>> hibernate-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev
>
>