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  • From: Remko van der Vossen <wich AT sourcemage.org>
  • To: Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum AT orgis.org>
  • Cc: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Install media
  • Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 05:56:32 +0100

On Thu, Nov 01, 2018 at 03:38:44AM +0100, Thomas Orgis wrote:
> Am Wed, 31 Oct 2018 04:37:01 +0100
> schrieb Remko van der Vossen <wich AT yuugen.jp>:
> > - outside of Sorcery as a grimoire function, i.e. doesn't require a
> > sorcery release and/or update by the user
>
> My main gripe would be that: This is core functionality of the package
> management. We would not implement castfs in grimoire … preventing ABI
> breakage, working around cyclic dependencies … things that sorcery
> should do.

Oh, I fully agree, I never intended this functionality to be permanently
in the grimoire. My idea was always to migrate it towards sorcery. The
issue is simply that we have no decent way of forcing a minimum sorcery
version from the grimoire and aside from that that getting the
functionality into stable sorcery will take time simply because the
available manpower with sufficient knowledge of sorcery is limited at
the moment. In my view new sorcery functionality should be in stable
sorcery for at least a year before we make widespread use of it from the
grimoire.

Putting the first version in grimoire, testing the waters and letting it
mature a bit before moving it to sorcery and committing to a specific
API seems like a sensible strategy, hence why I went that way.

> Having possibly multiple implementations of that core functionality
> around via multiple grimoires does not look right to me.

I don't think that should be a major issue, it should be easy to keep
them in sync, assuming we even need multiple copies, and even when they
aren't in sync it should not cause any real problems, the interface to
sorcery and any other tooling is common anyway.

> What is preventing us from making a sorcery release from time to time?

Manpower.

> Once we rely on a feature that was devel/test sorcery for a while and
> now entered stable, the grimoire shall request a minimum sorcery
> version. Admin Mage can update sorcery, then continue.

Except that we have no mechanism in place for a grimoire to request a
minimum sorcery version. Yes, we could probably hack that, but it would
also be a very dirty solution and you'd only get the message when you
first start casting things instead of when doing the scribe add or
scribe update.

> I like the idea of it being implicit for spells. If there is
> libfoo.so.y now instead of libfoo.so.x before an upgrade, preserve
> libfoo.so.x (be it in a special spell or in a database that later
> cleanse can work with).

Hmmn, I'm not sure I would be in favour of implicit. I'd have to think
about that. But I would definitely agree that whatever is in the spell
in regards to this should be as small and simple as possible.

> > - move the necessary libraries (or any other files for that matter) to a
> > special "preservation" spell, i.e. no aliens released to the wild.
> > The "preservation" spell can be dispelled when no longer needed
>
> This is a nice approach … offers the same result as mine and does not
> rely on anything else than cast/dispel to keep a system clean.

Only problem I see at the moment is when a preservation spell is created
and the later the old version of the original spell is reinstalled
(through dispel, switching back to an older grimoire, whatever) That
would cause the files to be suddenly owned by both the original spell
and the preservation spell and when the preservation spell is then
removed the system can blow up anyway. Still need a decent solution for
that, although it should be a pretty uncommon edge case.

> That is, as long as the list of preservation spells is easily reportet
> for the Mage to work with.

That's easy enough, gaze installed | grep smgl_preserve should do.

> > I had this largely working, but didn't have time to do the final ironing
> > out. I would be very interested in pursuing this further though.
>
> Well, maybe that work can be reactivated. I do not care that much about
> which approach is chosen in the end. Mine seems rather trivial for the
> basic feature of not deleting the old libs. But my proposl is
> incomplete: I only record the information necessary for cleanup. There
> is no actual cleanup code.

I'll do some work on it in the coming days and push it to a development
branch, that way everyone can have a look at it and we can discuss
particulars.

> > Some of the grimoire functions I made are very, very hackish, mostly due
> > to the lack of native support in Sorcery for what I'm trying to do.
>
> Let's make sorcery support that stuff natively!

As said before, agree 100%, but in my view probably after the first
release.

Regards, Remko



  • Re: [SM-Discuss] Install media, Remko van der Vossen, 11/02/2018

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