Bug 430808
Summary: | Please Branch for EPEL | ||
---|---|---|---|
Product: | [Fedora] Fedora | Reporter: | Jonathan Steffan <jonathansteffan> |
Component: | varnish | Assignee: | Ingvar Hagelund <ingvar> |
Status: | CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE | QA Contact: | Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa> |
Severity: | low | Docs Contact: | |
Priority: | low | ||
Version: | 9 | ||
Target Milestone: | --- | ||
Target Release: | --- | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | Linux | ||
Whiteboard: | |||
Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
Last Closed: | 2008-12-08 10:03:22 UTC | Type: | --- |
Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
Embargoed: |
Description
Jonathan Steffan
2008-01-29 21:31:32 UTC
Jonathan, here's the answer I gave when Mike McGrath (Red Hat) asked the same question. I also CCed the varnish-dist list, see http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/wiki/MailingLists As to the last paragraphs, the upstream guys answered that that making the varnish 2.x compatible with 1.x vcl would be very difficult, and so, this would not be done. As for now, I'm going to wait a bit more to see if any final roadmap for the 2.0 release will appear. If this does not happen in a few months, I'll reconsider. Ingvar * Mike McGrath > We're looking at using Varnish for Fedora's infrastructure but our front > end servers presently are running RHEL. What would it take to get varnish > into EPEL-5? Hello, Mike. I CC the varnish-dist list as this is right up their (our) path. I have got several requests for Varnish in EPEL the last months. We should probably be flattered. I discussed this a bit a while ago with some of the EPEL guys on IRC. There are some hurdles: Maintaining a stable version of some fast moving software project for RHEL (or EPEL) is quite different from wrapping up upstream releases for Fedora, as Red Hat know everything about. It's what they make business from, after all. Long time support is the major point. The released version of Varnish (the one that is in Fedora), is a 1.x version. 2.0 is on the stairs, or will be in a few months. Most of the users that use Varnish in heavy production are using some version of SVN TRUNK as there are new functionality in pre-2.0 that are very welcome for sites that have more than just a plain-file backend. The upstream developers say that they will retain focus on 2.0 and beyond, and will probably not continue to support 1.x in the future. This means that if I package the Fedora version now, varnish-1.1.2 will go into EPEL. It will be upgraded to 1.2 in a few weeks, and probably then get abandoned in a few months. Who will make security fixes when the first bugs arrive? If security bugs are found in 2.x, there is no automatic check of the 1.x sources, and if this is pointed out by third parties, fixes will not be backported to the 1.x tree by the upstream developers. I am no C coder, and could probably not do it. A future EPEL security team would have to take responsibilty for a piece of software that would be unsupported, and probably abandoned by most users, as 2.0 is what the users, including Red Hat, would like to use in production. So, what to do? There are few choices: 1) Package varnish-1.x for EPEL and keep it updated in the future. Someone other than me has to take security responsibility for it. Most users will want to use 2.0 when it is released. 2) Package varnish-1.x for EPEL, pretend it doesn't matter, and upgrade to 2.0 when it arrives. This will break all vcl configs as at least one of the main vcl configuration items has changed and is not upwards compatible. Could this be automatically patched? If all vcl files had fixed filenames, this could be changed "the Debian way" by patching the vcl files inline while upgrading. This would probably break a lot of systems, and we don't want that. The vcl files may be scattered around and loaded at run time by the admin tool too, so we don't even know what files to change. Nope, that won't do. This choice gives us a nice package that will be put in production over the world, and then we will have to break a lot of systems, and get a lot of angry users. Sound like a bad idea to me. Of course, a posting in the README and changelog on how to fix the upgrade will be appropriate for most advanced users, but a semi-automatic rpm upgrade will break systems for those who have installed Varnish and are not in that category. If I should have to package for EPEL today, I would probably go for this option anyway. It's also what the EPEL team themselves would suggest, I think, after I read their guidelines and discussed the matter with them. 3) Postpone EPEL packaging of Varnish until 2.0 is released. Solves most problems except for those that want to use Varnish today, and are not familiar with compiling and patching themselves. 3) Package a pre-2.0 svn version, and update it from time to time until 2.0 is relased. More than a bit risky, I guess. 4) Nag the upstream developers to include support for old-style vcl configuration, making old configurations upwards compatible, and upgrading from 1.x to 2.0 a no-brainer. Other solutions may be to split the package in varnish1 and varnish2, add warnings about broken vcl in large letters in the sysinit scripts, or even more creative tips. Ingvar Varnish is now available in epel for EL4 and EL5. $ yum -d0 info varnish Available Packages Name : varnish Arch : x86_64 Version: 2.0.2 Release: 1.el5 Size : 246 k Repo : epel Summary: Varnish is a high-performance HTTP accelerator Description: This is the Varnish high-performance HTTP accelerator. Documentation wiki and additional information about Varnish is available on the following web site: http://www.varnish-cache.org/ |