Use Ubuntu 24.04 instead of 20.04 for docker container

[jafingerhut]

No description provided.

[jafingerhut]

This makes quite a few changes:

• Use Ubuntu 24.04 inside the docker container, instead of Ubuntu 20.04
• Use Thrift 0.16.0 (formerly 0.13.0)
• Use grpc 1.62.3 (formerly 1.43.2)
• Use the default version of protobuf installed by building grpc 1.62.3, which is 4.25.1 (formerly built protobuf 3.18.1 separately)
• Use git clone commands inside of Dockerfile to get the desired versions of project source code, instead of submodules in the third-party repo.

The last change was motivated by my experience attempting to use the default version of pip installed in Ubuntu 24.04 and seeing that it failed to to pip3 install . from within several Github repo copies, unless it was a full git clone with a .git directory, which the submodules do not have.

Note: I have not yet attempted to use the resulting Docker image to build the p4lang/behavioral-model source code and test it. There might be things that still need to be fixed in order for that to work.

[fruffy]

I would consider using the Ubuntu 24.04 system versions for ccache/Protobuf/gRPC/thrift/sysrepo/libyang. With Ubuntu 24.04 they can/should all be installed via apt now.

iirc the main reason they were built from source was because this was previously not possible.

[jafingerhut]

I would consider using the Ubuntu 24.04 system versions for ccache/Protobuf/gRPC/thrift/sysrepo/libyang. With Ubuntu 24.04 they can/should all be installed via apt now.

iirc the main reason they were built from source was because this was previously not possible.

That seems surprising to me. Ubuntu 20.04 and earlier Ubuntu versions had some version of grpc and protobuf that you could install via apt-get. I had guessed/assumed that the reason for building from source was to get particular desired versions of those packages installed, and the hope of being able to modify/update those versions over time even if the base Ubuntu version did not change.

Even now with Ubuntu 24.04, it is not obvious to me whether one can use apt-get to install grpc, and then also install a matching version of Python grpcio package easily, without that Python install building grpc from source itself. Similar for protobuf (i.e. that it is not clear to me whether you can install matching binary & Python versions without installing from source).

[fruffy]

Even now with Ubuntu 24.04, it is not obvious to me whether one can use apt-get to install grpc, and then also install a matching version of Python grpcio package easily, without that Python install building grpc from source itself. Similar for protobuf (i.e. that it is not clear to me whether you can install matching binary & Python versions without installing from source).

At least I had versions of this working since Ubuntu 20: https://github.com/nyu-systems/gauntlet/blob/master/do_install.sh#L54

This worked for BMv2/P4C. Now with the Tofino studio etc I am not sure but those are not using the third-party images anyway.

Edit: For the purpose of the third-party image it is probably fine to build from source. My concern mostly revolves around the drift between what Ubuntu provides by default and what our ecosystem might depend on.

[fruffy]

@jafingerhut What's the status of this PR? I might depend on it soon, so we could merge it to let the container updates trickle down

[jafingerhut]

@jafingerhut What's the status of this PR? I might depend on it soon, so we could merge it to let the container updates trickle down

I did some fiddling around with it for a while to try to find something that worked, but did not find a solution for all the repos involved that made it all work, unfortunately, set it aside, and haven't gone back to it.

[fruffy]

We can temporarily change the tag here: https://github.com/p4lang/third-party/blob/main/.github/workflows/build.yml#L61 then use this version in downstream repos until we have fixed the issue.