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Re: Where should the authoritative list of frameworks live?

 

On 08/07/2014 03:55 PM, Martin Albisetti wrote:
Hi all,

It's become clear that we're having a hard time managing the list of
frameworks across all the different touch points at the current pace
we're adding them.
We're making progress towards the tools having update mechanisms, but
we're still no there yet.
I was discussing with Loic M. today whether that should live on the
Sofware Store and exposed as a json api, or in a package in the
archive. There may be a third better option. Lets decide and get it
implemented ASAP so we can keep moving forward with less friction.

I don't think I know enough about all the places that list is used to
be able to strongly advocate for a specific path, so since my
allegiance lies with the Store, I'd like to throw out the Pros of
putting it there:
- Easy to interact with, simple HTTP request and you get back a json
- Scales out
- Ultimately, the store accepts or rejects apps based on its knowledge
of frameworks, so it makes sense for it to have it added first
- Easy ACLs to allow people to add or deprecate via a web interface

In a nutshell, the way it would work to add, say,
ubuntu-sdk-14.10-html-dev3, we would:
- Go to a website with proper ACLs
- Add it
- Mark -dev2 as deprecated
- Trigger an update from reviewer tools
- Trigger an update to generate the package with the definitions
- Upload to the archive

I know Loic has a different proposal, so I'll let him propose his.


I will point out no matter how or where the list ultimately lives, it would be useful to have the ability to mark the manifest for support of future minor revisions. Currently, if I as a developer wish to track the development API, I must update my manifest each time the framework updates. This is painful, and only discovered when my click is rejected by the store for upload. Would it be possible to instead have something like the equivalent of ubuntu-sdk-14.10-dev*? That way the store can still force me to update once the transition from ubuntu-sdk-14.10-dev* to ubuntu-sdk-14.10 happens, yet at the same time I'm not forced to update my manifest for each minor development version.

I will note, this is really a non-issue except for tracking development versions, as otherwise you should know what you are targeting and specify it.


Nicholas


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