Subject: The moving target of OS support

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2015 11:35:41 +0800

All,

In the past we've made decisions to adopt new language variants and 
dependencies for Mir that meant only users on the latest Ubuntu release 
could build the latest Mir code. And if the latest Ubuntu release means 
the pre-release then we're probably excluding most Ubuntu users from 
being able to build the Mir code and getting involved.

In early development that's fine, but I'm wondering if we can agree to 
aim for some solidification. For example, should we say that after 
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is released all Ubuntu releases thereafter should be 
usable for doing development on Mir? Or just the latest LTS plus the 
latest release (ie. follow the Ubuntu support schedule)?

- Daniel

---

From: Kevin Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 11:08:14 -0500

I tend to agree, although i am curious to hear what others think.
My hope would be that we'd be balanced about adopting "new language
variants and dependencies" - if we have reasons to do so, then do those
outweigh stagnating for the sake of being able to build on older ubuntu
stables?

br,kg

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:35 PM, Daniel van Vugt <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> could build the latest Mir code. And if the latest Ubuntu release means the
> pre-release then we're probably excluding most Ubuntu users from being able
> to build the Mir code and getting involved.
>
> In early development that's fine, but I'm wondering if we can agree to aim
> for some solidification. For example, should we say that after Ubuntu 16.04
> LTS is released all Ubuntu releases thereafter should be usable for doing
> development on Mir? Or just the latest LTS plus the latest release (ie.
> follow the Ubuntu support schedule)?
>
> - Daniel
>
> --
> Mir-devel mailing list
> [email-masked]
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/mir-devel
>

---

From: Christopher James Halse Rogers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 10:17:15 +1000

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 2:08 AM, Kevin Gunn <[email-masked]> 
wrote:
> variants and dependencies" - if we have reasons to do so, then do 
> those outweigh stagnating for the sake of being able to build on 
> older ubuntu stables?

I don't think “has to build on latest LTS packages” is a reasonable 
requirement. GNOME doesn't support that; the X server doesn't support 
that; Mesa doesn't support that.

Developers are used to needing updating dependencies. So much so that 
there are very good tools for managing this, such as jhbuild.

Now, requiring a new *compiler* is a more disruptive requirement. Even 
here the foundations team maintains a PPA with new toolchains. I also 
don't see us requiring new compiler features in the immediate future; 
C++17 support isn't going to be reasonable for some time :).

We should be mindful of the cost of adding or updating a dependency, 
but not hesitate to do it if doing so makes our jobs easier.

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 10:03:05 +0800

I feel that is just making excuses to not aim higher. The whole platform 
changes every six months and yes Linux developers are used to the pain 
that comes with that. But would it hurt us to try and make Mir one of 
the more stable parts of that platform?

On 12/08/15 08:17, Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
>> those outweigh stagnating for the sake of being able to build on older
>> ubuntu stables?
>
> We should be mindful of the cost of adding or updating a dependency, but
> not hesitate to do it if doing so makes our jobs easier.
>

---

From: Christopher James Halse Rogers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 12:09:25 +1000

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Daniel van Vugt 
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> I feel that is just making excuses to not aim higher. The whole 
> platform changes every six months and yes Linux developers are used 
> to the pain that comes with that. But would it hurt us to try and 
> make Mir one of the more stable parts of that platform?

Yes! We don't¹ arbitrarily decide to use new libraries or features 
because they just happen to be there. We use new libraries or features 
because they make our jobs easier. Not using them does indeed hurt us.

¹: Or, to be pedantic, shouldn't. I don't think we've arbitrarily 
introduced new dependencies in the past, though.

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 10:17:58 +0800

We did. C++14 was completely unnecessary and the reason why you can't 
build Mir on our latest LTS today (without PPAs etc). The change to the 
code was mostly cosmetic. Yes, that did make our lives slightly easier 
in parts, but to what cost? If the cost is that some great developers 
using trusty never get involved in Mir then I think it's too high.

On 12/08/15 10:09, Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
>> platform changes every six months and yes Linux developers are used to
>> the pain that comes with that. But would it hurt us to try and make
>> Mir one of the more stable parts of that platform?
>

---

From: Christopher James Halse Rogers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 12:52:20 +1000

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Daniel van Vugt 
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> build Mir on our latest LTS today (without PPAs etc). The change to 
> the code was mostly cosmetic. Yes, that did make our lives slightly 
> easier in parts, but to what cost? If the cost is that some great 
> developers using trusty never get involved in Mir then I think it's 
> too high.

Yeah, I think the entirety of our disagreement lies in our estimate of 
this cost. I assign a negligible probability to the statement “we 
would have had some great contributions to Mir if only it could build 
on 14.04 without adding PPAs”.

I agree that it *lowers* the probability, but (a) I think the 
absolutely zero-extra-friction probability of contribution is on the 
low side, and (b) the extra friction of adding an 
Ubuntu-core-team-supported PPA to install gcc-5 is negligable.

---

From: Cemil Azizoglu <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 22:29:06 -0500

Is there some external interest in Mir that is prompting this? Do we have
evidence that there are people that want to contribute but find it
inconvenient to do so? If so, assuming they have a good reason, it'd make
sense to support older OS versions. If not, then it doesn't make sense to
create extra work for ourselves.

If we are going by assumptions, IMHO, people that are motivated and able
enough to contribute are probably on the cutting edge of technology, and
may actually prefer using the latest and greatest tools/OS.

Cemil

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 9:52 PM, Christopher James Halse Rogers <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Daniel van Vugt <
>> code was mostly cosmetic. Yes, that did make our lives slightly easier in
>> parts, but to what cost? If the cost is that some great developers using
>> trusty never get involved in Mir then I think it's too high.
>>
>
> this cost. I assign a negligible probability to the statement “we would
> have had some great contributions to Mir if only it could build on 14.04
> without adding PPAs”.
>
> I agree that it *lowers* the probability, but (a) I think the absolutely
> zero-extra-friction probability of contribution is on the low side, and (b)
> the extra friction of adding an Ubuntu-core-team-supported PPA to install
> gcc-5 is negligable.
>
>
>
> --
> Mir-devel mailing list

-- 
Cemil Azizoglu
Mir Display Server - Team Lead
Canonical USA

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 12:02:36 +0800

My personal experience (and what I've observed in our users over years 
of playing customer support) is that plenty of intelligent people prefer 
LTS over the latest release. For stability and long term support. I feel 
that's a reasonable and intelligent decision to make if someone wants to 
keep their one Ubuntu machine on LTS.

On 12/08/15 11:29, Cemil Azizoglu wrote:
> Is there some external interest in Mir that is prompting this? Do we
> have evidence that there are people that want to contribute but find it
> inconvenient to do so? If so, assuming they have a good reason, it'd
> make sense to support older OS versions. If not, then it doesn't make
> sense to create extra work for ourselves.
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 9:52 PM, Christopher James Halse Rogers
> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     <[email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>         We did. C++14 was completely unnecessary and the reason why you
>         can't build Mir on our latest LTS today (without PPAs etc). The
>         change to the code was mostly cosmetic. Yes, that did make our
>         lives slightly easier in parts, but to what cost? If the cost is
>         that some great developers using trusty never get involved in
>         Mir then I think it's too high.
>
>
>     Yeah, I think the entirety of our disagreement lies in our estimate
>     of this cost. I assign a negligible probability to the statement “we
>     would have had some great contributions to Mir if only it could
>     build on 14.04 without adding PPAs”.
>
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: Christopher James Halse Rogers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 16:45:38 +1000

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Daniel van Vugt 
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> My personal experience (and what I've observed in our users over 
> years of playing customer support) is that plenty of intelligent 
> people prefer LTS over the latest release. For stability and long 
> term support. I feel that's a reasonable and intelligent decision to 
> make if someone wants to keep their one Ubuntu machine on LTS.

Oh, absolutely! But you *can* easily develop Mir on Ubuntu 14.04; you 
just need to add the toolchain PPA and install gcc-5.

The alternatives aren't “use new things, and only people on 15.04 can 
build Mir” and “don't use new things”. The alternatives are 
“use new things, and add a small additional step to those on 14.04 
who want to build Mir” versus “don't use new things”.

Now, that additional step is not nothing, but I don't believe that it's 
a significant barrier.

---

From: Marco Trevisan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:48:08 +0200

Il 12/08/2015 08:45, Christopher James Halse Rogers ha scritto:
>> of playing customer support) is that plenty of intelligent people
>> prefer LTS over the latest release. For stability and long term
>> support. I feel that's a reasonable and intelligent decision to make
>> if someone wants to keep their one Ubuntu machine on LTS.
> 

You can do it also using some hacks on the code (not so big actually),
but it's doable.

However, while I tend to agree that having development support for the
latest LTS is a good move to attract people, in this scenario we should
probably advertise more the usage of other development tools such as LXC
(I've been able to both run mir from LXC and just mir in my host and
clients on the LXC easily) and vmware (well here's we have docs).

So providing a lxc-configuration for developing mir on it would be imho
a good compromise.

Cheers