[Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

Dear OCaml list,

We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;

- OCaml 3.12.1
- OCaml 4.00.1
- OCaml 4.01.0
- OCaml 4.02.0

We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
compiler as an "allowed failure".

Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.

Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
to support 3.12.1 for some time.

thanks,
Anil

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Török Edwin]

On 02/16/2015 01:04 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> Dear OCaml list,
> 
> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
> 
> - OCaml 3.12.1
> - OCaml 4.00.1
> - OCaml 4.01.0
> - OCaml 4.02.0
> 
> We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
> compiler as an "allowed failure".
> 
> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
> 
> Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
> that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
> for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
> to support 3.12.1 for some time.

Debian's latest stable (Wheezy) has 3.12.1, and the next release Jessie has 4.01.0 and there is an RC1 installer for it, but AFAIK there is no fixed release date when Jessie becomes stable.
Would be nice to have 3.12.1 tests until Jessie becomes stable, but OTOH there are quite a few packages already that only build with >=4.x
and if one wants to build them on 3.12.1 they require some minor patches already.

Does OPAM support conditionally applying patches? (i.e. only apply patch if compiler_ver <= 4.00.0)

Best regards,
--Edwin

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 16 Feb 2015, at 11:21, Török Edwin <edwin+ml-ocaml@etorok.net> wrote:
> 
> On 02/16/2015 01:04 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> Dear OCaml list,
>> 
>> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
>> 
>> - OCaml 3.12.1
>> - OCaml 4.00.1
>> - OCaml 4.01.0
>> - OCaml 4.02.0
>> 
>> We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
>> compiler as an "allowed failure".
>> 
>> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
>> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
>> 
>> Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
>> that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
>> for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
>> to support 3.12.1 for some time.
> 
> Debian's latest stable (Wheezy) has 3.12.1, and the next release Jessie has 4.01.0 and there is an RC1 installer for it, but AFAIK there is no fixed release date when Jessie becomes stable.
> Would be nice to have 3.12.1 tests until Jessie becomes stable, but OTOH there are quite a few packages already that only build with >=4.x
> and if one wants to build them on 3.12.1 they require some minor patches already.

That's a good point.  We'll just have to keep 3.12.1 in the matrix until Jessie rotates in and has a settling period.

> Does OPAM support conditionally applying patches? (i.e. only apply patch if compiler_ver <= 4.00.0)

It does; just add a constraint on `ocaml-version` to the `patches` field.  For example, see:

https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/blob/master/packages/bitstring/bitstring.2.0.4/opam#L14

Patches to backport 3.12.1 support to any 4.00+ package from users are welcome.  They are minimally intrusive to users of newer compilers since the patches aren't applied unless the older compiler is used, so it's easier to merge these into the OPAM-repository.

-anil

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[François Bobot]

On 16/02/2015 12:04, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
>
> - OCaml 3.12.1
> - OCaml 4.00.1
> - OCaml 4.01.0
> - OCaml 4.02.0
>
>
> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
>

More than 3.12.1, I think 4.02.0 should retire when 4.02.1 enter.

OCaml 4.02.1 added a lot of important fixes, I think nobody should use 4.02.0 instead of 4.02.1.

Best,

-- 
François Bobot

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Gabriel Scherer]

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Agreed. Some people still use 4.02.0; we should hunt them, understand their
use-case (I heard it could be something so simple to fix that "this PR I
use the automatic opam switch for was submitted for 4.02.0"), and move them
to 4.02.1.

Please speak up if you're concerned! There is no good reason to suffer the
atrocious compilation times.

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 4:59 PM, François Bobot <francois.bobot@cea.fr>
wrote:

> On 16/02/2015 12:04, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>
>> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull
>> request to OPAM;
>>
>> - OCaml 3.12.1
>> - OCaml 4.00.1
>> - OCaml 4.01.0
>> - OCaml 4.02.0
>>
>>
>> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on
>> our Travis CI
>> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the
>> testing matrix.
>>
>>
> More than 3.12.1, I think 4.02.0 should retire when 4.02.1 enter.
>
> OCaml 4.02.1 added a lot of important fixes, I think nobody should use
> 4.02.0 instead of 4.02.1.
>
> Best,
>
> --
> François Bobot
>
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>

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Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Stephen Dolan]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:04 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org> wrote:
> Dear OCaml list,
>
> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
>
> - OCaml 3.12.1
> - OCaml 4.00.1
> - OCaml 4.01.0
> - OCaml 4.02.0
>
> We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
> compiler as an "allowed failure".
>
> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.

Getting rid of 4.02.0 will probably ease more CI-stress than getting
rid of 3.12.1: as Gabriel points out, one of the few changes from
4.02.0 to 4.02.1 is to fix the atrocious compile times of 4.02.0.

Stephen

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Adrien Nader]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> Dear OCaml list,
> 
> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
> 
> - OCaml 3.12.1
> - OCaml 4.00.1
> - OCaml 4.01.0
> - OCaml 4.02.0
> 
> We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
> compiler as an "allowed failure".
> 
> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
> 
> Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
> that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
> for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
> to support 3.12.1 for some time.

For yypkg/win-builds I've done a quick survey of what's in Linux
distributions. I was mainly interested in moving past 3.12.1
compatibility for my own code but found it undoable before the end of
this year or maybe early next year.

Ubuntu 12.04 has 3.12.1 and is still supported and widespread. 14.04 has
4.01.0 but isn't very old. Debian has a similar combination for its
versions. I think 4.02.0 wasn't picked by linux distributions with
long-term support (including RH if I'm not mistaken).

3.12.1 is really widespread and I think it has to be kept for a fairly
long time. 4.00.0 is basically never used. 4.01.0 is widespread and will
be widespread for some time. 4.02.0 is nowhere to be seen. I believe
4.02.0/1 and maybe 4.02.2 won't be picked up either (unless 4.03.0 takes
close to two years to be released).

I'd say: keep 3.12.1, 4.01.0, 4.02.whatever-is-the-most-recent (because
that's what ocamlers use) and trunk. Dump the others (i.e. 4.00.1,
4.02.0).

-- 
Adrien Nader

Re: [Caml-list] [opam-devel] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Louis Gesbert]

Thanks a lot for the detailed overview. I was indeed thinking it wouldn't be worth keeping both 4.02.0 and 4.02.1, but didn't know, for example, about 4.00.1. The first consequence of dropping e.g. support for 3.12.1 would probably be that incompatible packages are either not fixed, or not declared incompatible, which would lead to an error during compilation whenever OPAM tried to install them, instead of a clear message or a solution around that package/version if it exists.

Currently, according to the metadata, 561 of the 837 OPAM packages (67%) can be installed on 3.12.1, around 30 of which not at their latest version. The others either are not compatible or depend on an incompatible package.

OPAM itself (as opposed to the repo) will obviously keep compiling on 3.12.1 for the moment (the tests regularly help pick up an incompatible String.init or likewise)

Best,
Louis Gesbert -- OCamlPro

> - Adrien Nader, 16/02/2015 19:52 -
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> > Dear OCaml list,
> > 
> > We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
> > 
> > - OCaml 3.12.1
> > - OCaml 4.00.1
> > - OCaml 4.01.0
> > - OCaml 4.02.0
> > 
> > We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
> > compiler as an "allowed failure".
> > 
> > Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
> > resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
> > 
> > Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
> > that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
> > for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
> > to support 3.12.1 for some time.
> 
> For yypkg/win-builds I've done a quick survey of what's in Linux
> distributions. I was mainly interested in moving past 3.12.1
> compatibility for my own code but found it undoable before the end of
> this year or maybe early next year.
> 
> Ubuntu 12.04 has 3.12.1 and is still supported and widespread. 14.04 has
> 4.01.0 but isn't very old. Debian has a similar combination for its
> versions. I think 4.02.0 wasn't picked by linux distributions with
> long-term support (including RH if I'm not mistaken).
> 
> 3.12.1 is really widespread and I think it has to be kept for a fairly
> long time. 4.00.0 is basically never used. 4.01.0 is widespread and will
> be widespread for some time. 4.02.0 is nowhere to be seen. I believe
> 4.02.0/1 and maybe 4.02.2 won't be picked up either (unless 4.03.0 takes
> close to two years to be released).
> 
> I'd say: keep 3.12.1, 4.01.0, 4.02.whatever-is-the-most-recent (because
> that's what ocamlers use) and trunk. Dump the others (i.e. 4.00.1,
> 4.02.0).
> 
> 

Re: [Caml-list] OPAM: retiring 3.12.1 testing?

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 16 Feb 2015, at 18:52, Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> Dear OCaml list,
>> 
>> We are currently testing the following compiler versions on every pull request to OPAM;
>> 
>> - OCaml 3.12.1
>> - OCaml 4.00.1
>> - OCaml 4.01.0
>> - OCaml 4.02.0

My apologies -- there were a couple of typos in my original mail.  I meant that
we are testing *opam-repository* with the above versions, not OPAM itself (which can
be tested on a much bigger set of compiler versions).  Also, we are not currently
testing 4.02.0 with packages, just 4.02.1, as the slow compilation speed of 4.02.0
makes it impractical to do so.

>> We will shortly have to test 4.02.1, and would also like to test trunk snapshots of the
>> compiler as an "allowed failure".
>> 
>> Running 6 compiler revisions per package puts quite a bit of stress on our Travis CI
>> resources, and so it's probably time to retire OCaml 3.12.1 from the testing matrix.
>> 
>> Before we do this, I'd like to get a sense for how many people still care about ensuring
>> that their packages work well on the 3.12.1 series, or if there are still distributions
>> for which this support matters.  If there is still sufficient interest, we can continue
>> to support 3.12.1 for some time.
> 
> For yypkg/win-builds I've done a quick survey of what's in Linux
> distributions. I was mainly interested in moving past 3.12.1
> compatibility for my own code but found it undoable before the end of
> this year or maybe early next year.
> 
> Ubuntu 12.04 has 3.12.1 and is still supported and widespread. 14.04 has
> 4.01.0 but isn't very old. Debian has a similar combination for its
> versions. I think 4.02.0 wasn't picked by linux distributions with
> long-term support (including RH if I'm not mistaken).
> 
> 3.12.1 is really widespread and I think it has to be kept for a fairly
> long time. 4.00.0 is basically never used. 4.01.0 is widespread and will
> be widespread for some time. 4.02.0 is nowhere to be seen. I believe
> 4.02.0/1 and maybe 4.02.2 won't be picked up either (unless 4.03.0 takes
> close to two years to be released).
> 
> I'd say: keep 3.12.1, 4.01.0, 4.02.whatever-is-the-most-recent (because
> that's what ocamlers use) and trunk. Dump the others (i.e. 4.00.1,
> 4.02.0).

I agree with this assessment, although I'll try to keep 4.00.1 as long
as possible to make it possible to have finer grained constraints and
make bisection tests easier.  Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

Anil