Releases

[UebelAndre]

Why aren't there releases for this repo? I feel like this is something every rules repository should have. Is there anything stopping this repo from having releases?

[damienmg]

We are all working in companies that use a work at head model in which release does not really make sense. As this repositories is supposed to be used at source level there is no compelling reason to have release and release induce toil.

[mfarrugi]

I think that it is useful to tag the minimum (and maximum?) bazel version required, since those are the only breaking changes we have made in the past. This was a source of toil for me in the past, lining things up w/ the very frequent bazel updates. I think the 'live at head' approach has only been the case for contributors, as most people will want to include their changes by using the latest version.

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On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 9:58 AM Damien Martin-Guillerez < ***@***.***> wrote: We are all working in companies that use a work at head model in which release does not really make sense. As this repositories is supposed to be used at source level there is no compelling reason to have release and release induce toil. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#415 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAROG6FWL4WM6O6HOSMVENTSHNGCFANCNFSM4RYKY22Q> .

[UebelAndre]

I think that it is useful to tag the minimum (and maximum?) bazel version required

most people will want to include their changes by using the latest version.

I agree with both of these points.

[UebelAndre]

Would it be possible to get a release? Is there something in CI that tests the oldest supported version?

[mfarrugi]

Sure, but what do you need from a release? It is little more than a tag. It looks like CI can ( https://github.com/bazelbuild/continuous-integration/blob/master/buildkite/README.md#using-a-specific-version-of-bazel), but currently doesn't.

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On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 6:50 PM UebelAndre ***@***.***> wrote: Would it be possible to get a release? Is there something in CI that tests the oldest supported version? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#415 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAROG6GU5BLZJV24MERX5P3SHUNEXANCNFSM4RYKY22Q> .

[UebelAndre]

A release to me is an indication of what kinds of changes were made to a code base. It's little more than a tag but the value in it is the semantic versioning. If a neat new feature was added, I should be able to infer that from the release number.

I think testing should be done on some modern version and it should be up to the contributors/maintainers to keep up with modern Bazel releases and be aware of potential incompatibilities with older versions. But I don't think this testing is all that valuable without releases to represent these kinds of changes.

[UebelAndre]

@mfarrugi @damienmg In the issue linked above, a user had an issue due to change that broke compatibility with older versions of Bazel. I think rules_rust should have releases and they should indicate breakages or changes in the API but if nothing else I believe the changes in #463 call for a new release to communicate.

[UebelAndre]

Also having thought about this a bit. It'd be kinda nice to have a release at 9a8ef69 so it's easier to communicate in cargo-raze what it's target compatibility version is. Since right now cargo-raze is going to potentially generate files that expect newer platform configurations to be added to the repo.