Re: [BuildStream] Plugins migration and testing

[Tristan Daniël Maat <tristan maat codethink co uk>]

Hi Sander,

Just a one-off comment from me to clear up some of the confusion around 
the different plugin repositories:

> I am not convinced that moving everything into 
> buildstream-plugins-experimental is ideal.  We are now moving plugins 
> that had a blessed status by virtue of being in the core to an area 
> called "experimental".  I would have preferred 
> buildstream-plugins-core or even just bst-plugins if we stuck to the 
> move everything in core to a single repo as an intermediate.  There 
> was already precedent for having multiple repos (bst-external, 
> bst-plugins-experimental and bst-plugins-container), so one more 
> wasn't going to hurt(?)
>
> I'm actually unclear how bst-external and bst-plugins-experimental 
> relate, as they seem to have overlapping content?  The docker source 
> plugin seems to also be duplicated?
bst-plugins-experimental is the repository that currently contains 
versions of plugins from bst-external that work on BuildStream 2.0. It's 
the plugins repository that should be used when running BuildStream from 
the master branch, since the old plugins from BuildStream 1.x are 
incompatible with BuildStream 2.0+ and vice-versa. Any duplication 
simply stems from plugins that weren't touched because they use no 
changed API, and obviously they'd share names. There are also some new 
additions since development for 1.x has stalled a little.

In other words, -experimental because the branch providing the plugin 
API is experimental, not because the plugins are experimental.

There is actually not much precedent for having multiple repos, as 
bst-plugins-container came after the first couple of de-cores, to my 
knowledge (although I'm all for it and have been pushing for it). My 
guess is that the first couple of core plugins we removed were 
considered de-blessed, and naturally went to the same repository that is 
the de-facto bst-external of BuildStream 2.0. The precedent then made 
that seem right for all the other plugins that were removed.

Naming-wise, I agree that this is unfortunate, but as far as I know the 
bst-plugins-experimental repository is anyway intended to be renamed 
once BuildStream 2.0 becomes stable. A name like bst-plugins-core is 
probably appropriate, with the non-blessed plugins from there moving to 
something like bst-plugins-extra.

In essence, bst-plugins-experimental naturally evolved to be the 
temporary holding ground that you suggest for now; We could consider 
renaming it ahead of schedule to reduce confusion -- it has certainly 
confused me in the past, I'd love to see that.

> Cheers,
>
> Sander

Regards,

Tristan