launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Bjorn Tillenius <bjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:45:19AM +0100, Muharem Hrnjadovic wrote:
> Bjorn Tillenius wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 02:44:40PM +0100, Muharem Hrnjadovic wrote:
> >> Hello Bjoern,
> >>
> >> the URIs we currently use for package sets are like
> >>
> >>     '../package-sets/mozilla'
> >>
> >> Because package set names are only unique in combination with a distro
> >> series now the URIs will need to change to something like:
> >>
> >>     '../package-sets/karmic/mozilla'
> >>
> >> or
> >>
> >>     '../package-sets/mozilla/karmic'
> > 
> > Let's wait to discuss the implementation details. I'm a bit interested
> > in how a URL for a package set looks like. You said on IRC that you
> 
> With the database schema changes that already landed on db-devel package
> set names cease to be unique globally i.e. a package set names are now
> only unique in combination with a distro series.
> 
> That breaks the existing package set naming/traversal scheme.
> 
> > decided to give package sets it's own top-level space. And looking at
> > the code, a URL path looks like:
> > 
> >     /package-set/desktop
> > 
> > And with a distro series, it would be either
> > 
> >     /package-set/desktop/hoary
> > 
> > or
> > 
> >     /package-set/hoary/desktop
> 
> In order to fix the currently broken traversal scheme for package sets
> and have a working LP API after the roll-out on 04-Nov-2009 I will need
> to land a branch that adopts the URI structure above (e.g.
> /package-sets/karmic/kernel-packages) today.
> 
> Having said that, I am wide open to discussing package set URI/traversal
> changes for the forthcoming LP developement cycle.

Right, it makes sense to fix this to keep it working. However, it's
quite important to think about the URL structure, considering a few
basic use cases, before deciding what it should be. It sounds like we
definitely want to change it, and now you have the problem that people
will rely on the initial URL. Which means that you either have to make
sure that the old URL still works, or say "sorry guys, you're script
will break, and you will have to adjust them to work with the new URL
structure. The latter is quite hard to do, since you don't know who have
alrady written scripts that deal with package sets.


-- 
Björn Tillenius | https://launchpad.net/~bjornt