Dear everyone,
we had further discussions about the semantics of x-maintenance-intent
, and hope to clarify in this post. Also, we adapted the policy which is in the opam-repository git repository: opam-repository/governance/policies/archiving.md at master · ocaml/opam-repository · GitHub
x-maintenance-intent
We’ve had some further discussions on Phase 3 and the semantics of the x-maintenance-intent
field.
Goal
Our aim is to be not disruptive for the common OCaml programmer or user. The opam-repository supports (from February 1st on) OCaml 4.08 and greater. This means that if you install OCaml 4.08 you should be able to install all the packages that have ever been released with 4.08 support.
The revised semantics of “(latest)” is “the latest version of this package, so that every supported OCaml version will have an installation candidate”.
Example
Let me give you an example, consider the package “basic” which exists in three versions:
basic.1.0.0 with the dependency “ocaml” {>= “4.05” & < “5”}
basic.1.0.1 with the dependency “ocaml” {>= “4.08” & < “5”}
basic.2.0.0 with the dependency “ocaml” {>= “4.14” & < “5”}
Here, if the x-maintenance-intent: [ "(latest)" ]
is present, we will only (try to) archive basic.1.0.0 – since 1.0.1 is needed for OCaml 4.08 … 4.13.
Default value
The default value of x-maintenance-intent
will for now be "(any)"
- so all versions are kept. In the future, we may change this default to "(latest)"
, but will announce this ahead of the change with plenty of time.
This default value is agreed on by the non-disruptive agreement to cause the least trouble.
x-maintained
In addition to the x-maintenance-intent
- which covers the semantics of all versions of an opam package, we support another field, x-maintained: BOOL
. This is an overwrite for a specific opam package version, and allows to declare whether it is maintained or not.
It is useful in the setting where you’ve lots of pre-releases that are no longer maintained and you like to state this without writing a global intent for the opam package (e.g. for the OCaml compiler packages, the alpha, beta, and rc versions). Here, x-maintained: false
is a nice setting. NB: earlier we proposed flags: deprecated
- but we stay away from the flags, since there may be packages that are deprecated but still maintained (opam prints a warning if you install a package with the deprecated flag).
If you have a private project and depend on a specific version of an opam package, you can as well PR the x-maintained: true
field for that opam file (please specify when, who, and why). This will ensure that this opam file stays in the opam repository.
Phase 3
In Phase 3, we will consider all packages marked with x-maintenance-intent
(the versions not matching the intent) and x-maintained: false
to be archived.
We plan to ensure that (a) all supported OCaml versions will retain an installation candidate (b) all reverse dependencies will still be installable. As a note, if you have an availability condition (some version will only work on some OS), we won’t take that into consideration – you will need to specify the x-maintenance-intent
to cover your versions.
Our plan is to publish the list of packages to be archived by February 15th on this discourse. It is likely we’ll have candidate lists PRed to the opam-repository-archive earlier. We have lots of ideas and plans for CI systems to give feedback which opam versions are falling into the maintenance intent when you open a PR to the opam-repository (but we’re not there yet).
Future
As noted above, the default value of x-maintenance-intent
may change in time. If this is decided, we will announce this with plenty of time before.
Also, at some point in the future we will bump the OCaml lower bound (from February 1st it is 4.08).
Action
For the smooth shrinking of the opam-repository, please don’t hesitate to fill in your x-maintenance-intent (especially “(none)” and “(latest)” are fine and safe choices).
If you want to contribute more, the opam-repository needs help for triaging and merging PRs - why not become a maintainer? See the old but still valid ‘call for new opam-repository maintainers’ if you’re interested.