Un-orphaned NodeJS packages upgrades in rawhide

[Jan Staněk]

Hello,
I have recently (last week) taken on maintenance of several to-be
orphaned nodejs packages. Since the packages were not upgraded for a
while, they are usually a major version behind the upstream release.
I have started to remedy this, but given the relatively large jump in
version numbers, there might be issues. If your node package stops
building in rawhide suddenly, check the dependencies for updates;
feel free to reach to me with related issues.

The upgraded (or soon to be upgraded) packages in question:
- nodejs-bluebird
- nodejs-clean-css
- nodejs-grunt-known-options
- nodejs-path-exists

Keep in mind that the above list might expand in the near future,
given the current situation with many nodejs-* orphans.
-- 
Jan Staněk
Associate Software Engineer, Core Services
Red Hat Czech
jstanek(a)redhat.com     IM: jstanek

[Jared K. Smith]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:49 AM Jan Staněk <jstanek(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hello,
>  I have recently (last week) taken on maintenance of several to-be
>  orphaned nodejs packages. Since the packages were not upgraded for a
>  while, they are usually a major version behind the upstream release.
>  I have started to remedy this, but given the relatively large jump in
>  version numbers, there might be issues.
>  
One of the frustrating things with NodeJS packaging in Fedora is that
because of the crazy number of dependencies between NodeJS packages, a
simple version bump in one package could cause a whole cascade of other
packages that need to be updated to newer versions to support that
dependency here.

The right thing to do in this case is to look at each of those packages,
find anything that's dependent upon those packages, and make sure each one
will still work with the newer version of the package.  It's tiresome,
thankless work -- and you often end up getting three or four levels down
the dependency tree before realizing things aren't going to work -- which
is why I've stepped away from packaging up new NodeJS packages for a
while...

--
Jared Smith

[Jan Staněk]

On 29. 04. 19 15:42, Jared K. Smith wrote:
>  One of the frustrating things with NodeJS packaging in Fedora is
> that
>  because of the crazy number of dependencies between NodeJS packages, a
>  simple version bump in one package could cause a whole cascade of other
>  packages that need to be updated to newer versions to support that
>  dependency here. 
That's why I'm only doing this in Rawhide (and I would love to have
something akin to Rawhide-testing).

>  The right thing to do in this case is to look at each of those
> packages,
>  find anything that's dependent upon those packages, and make sure each
>  one will still work with the newer version of the package. 
That will never work (long-term) without the cooperation with the
maintainers of the affected packages. I'm happy to help with any issues
caused by the update, but I would leave finding these issues to koschei.

Only other option I can think of is going the Rust route (packages only
in rawhide, anything depending on them must be a module), which I'm not
a fan of.

Best regards,
-- 
Jan Staněk
Associate Software Engineer, Core Services
Red Hat Czech
jstanek(a)redhat.com     IM: jstanek

[Tom Hughes]

On 29/04/2019 15:21, Jan Staněk wrote:

>  Only other option I can think of is going the Rust route (packages
> only
>  in rawhide, anything depending on them must be a module), which I'm not
>  a fan of. 
Module don't work for Node.js though.

They work for rust and go because of static linking, so different
packages can pull in the library versions (from parallel available
modules) at build time and then those libraries are statically
linked into the resulting program.

Node.js is totally different though - there the node modules are
needed at run time by the installed packages not just at build time
so you would need parallel installability not just availability.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom(a)compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/

[Fernando Nasser]

On 2019-04-29 10:31 a.m., Tom Hughes wrote:
>  On 29/04/2019 15:21, Jan Staněk wrote:
>
> > Only other option I can think of is going the Rust route (packages only
> > in rawhide, anything depending on them must be a module), which I'm not
> > a fan of.
>
>  Module don't work for Node.js though.
>
>  They work for rust and go because of static linking, so different
>  packages can pull in the library versions (from parallel available
>  modules) at build time and then those libraries are statically
>  linked into the resulting program.
>
>  Node.js is totally different though - there the node modules are
>  needed at run time by the installed packages not just at build time
>  so you would need parallel installability not just availability. 

Right.  For major versions the only way is to resort to the good olde
versioned packages.

nodejs-xxx  for the latest
and nodejs-xxxN  for the legacy one needed

In the case of node I wonder if all packages should not be versioned
with the major version anyway.

Besides that, we'd have to relax dependencies with '^' around.  But to
do that we'd need to have some basic tests for the modules we meddle
with the dependencies.

Fernando

>  Tom
>