Re: [orbit-dev] Once provided, always provided

[David M Williams <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Yes, I was surprised by this policy. Anyway,
I also disagree with this
> policy for a couple of reasons. It basically means, that over time
Orbit
> builds will become larger and larger with a lot of old "crap"
in them.

I agree. And we can remove some old ones, as DJ alluded
to, per Retention Policy. 
I've always thought we could (probably) do even better
... if we had some 
reliable way to determine if a bundle was no longer
in active use by 
Eclipse projects, say by querying CQs. But, we'd have
to figure that out, 
document the proposed change, get feedback, etc.  

> 
> These days, p2 is able to consume bundles from various repositories.
> This also works nicely with PDE Build. Thus, for a true re-build one
has
> to use a particular build/p2 repository that was consumed in the
> original build anyway. The bundles will always be available in old
> builds. Thus, there is no point in keeping them forever in new builds,
> especially when they were proofed to be buggy.
> 

Agreed. My rebuild example was all wet. But, still,
we do need to retain 
what is in R-build, in case adopters are not able
to "move up" right away. 
And of course we could remove bundles that proved
to be harmfully buggy (or turn 
out to have IP problems) but that'd be an exception
to the rule, and need 
to be widely reviewed and communicated to adopters,
etc. 

> I see a point in keeping them for maintenance releases. But according
to
> our build policy Orbit doesn't do maintenance builds.

Yes, we do maintenance builds. But,
only on demand.  So, if we did do a Helios SR1, for example, it would
be important 
to have the exact same content as the
Helios R-build ... except with only the desired fixes changed. 

I think another future improvement might
come as we make progress on having a common, single, persistent p2 repository.

In that case, for Orbit, we might be
able to easily identify when a bundle has to be re-built ... such as only
if our "builder" scripts 
change, or Eclipse Foundation signing
scripts change, or of course when the bundle itself changes. This seems,
conceptually, 
easier to do in Orbit than other projects,
since we basically are assembling the bundles ... not actually re-compiling
anything. 
(Well, except for one case). 

Thanks for the comments and discussion.