[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Suggestion for New Upgrade Script Policy

[Justin Hopkins]

Dan,

It does seem like there is a considerable amount of pain posted to the 
lists by folks that have to deal with so many minor upgrade scripts. If 
this would help cut down on that, then +1

Justin

On Fri May 30 14:23:21 2014, Dan Wells wrote:
> Hello all,
> I know that eventually we want to move toward a more fluid DB upgrade
> model, but leaving that plan aside for the moment, I’d like to suggest
> a new policy for maintenance releases.
> My sense is that, as Evergreen matures, people are staying on the
> previous version for longer periods, so it is becoming increasingly
> likely that the one-time upgrade moment (e.g. 2.5.3->2.6.0 ) won’t be
> what most people need.  I propose that each maintenance release
> include two scripts instead of just the one we do now.  For
> maintenance releases, we currently generate only an upgrade script
> from minor to minor within the same major release (e.g. 2.5.4 -> 2.5.5
> and 2.6.0 -> 2.6.1).  For completeness, though, we really also need a
> minor to minor upgrade **across** the major releases (e.g. 2.5.5 ->
> 2.6.1).
> Doing this would mean more work for the maintainers, but I think it
> would be worth it, since newest to newest is the most sensible upgrade
> path at any given time.  If we start doing this, I would also suggest
> that maintenance releases be staggered by one week to minimize
> potential churn (i.e. 2.5.5 should be fully settled before we try to
> make a 2.5.5->2.6.1 script).  The alternative would be to make, in
> this case, a 2.5.4->2.6.1 upgrade, but that would mean the
> cross-version script would always lag behind.
> So, this is really two proposals to vote/comment on:
> 1) Should we add a new maintenance requirement of creating
> minor-to-minor scripts across major versions with every release?
> 2) Should we stagger maintenance releases by one week, ordered by
> oldest to newest maintained release?  (e.g. 2.5.x first, 2.6.x a week
> later)
> Thanks,
> Dan
> Daniel Wells
> Library Programmer/Analyst
> Hekman Library, Calvin College
> 616.526.7133