On 1/16/13, Marcela Mašláňová <mmasl...@redhat.com> wrote:
* #992 F19 Feature: NodeJS -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NodeJS (mmaslano, 18:04:56)
* AGREED: NodeJS is approved; for the feature to be considered
complete, packaging guidelines must be approved (+8,-0) (mmaslano,
18:17:50)
* sgallagh will speak about guidelines with FPC (mmaslano, 18:18:29)
Now that we're discussing features in fedora-devel prior to FESCo
voting on them, it would be nice if FESCo members could raise some of
their concerns in the e-mail discussion prior to the meeting. I
couldn't really make the meeting and it seemed like the most of the
concerns around node modules had been addressed already in that
thread, so I wasn't too concerned about it.
That way, most of your questions would have already been answered. ;-)
18:04:56 <mmaslano> #topic #992 F19 Feature: NodeJS -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NodeJS
18:05:03 <mmaslano> .fesco 992
18:05:05 <zodbot> mmaslano: #992 (F19 Feature: NodeJS -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NodeJS) – FESCo -
https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/992
18:05:49 <sgallagh> I proposed this feature, but the budding Node.js community
within Fedora has really taken off with it.
18:06:09 <sgallagh> A few dozen node packages are in the review queue already,
several of them approved.
18:06:19 <mmaslano> sgallagh: I know you was working with upstream, so there
shouldn't be any serious problems
18:06:20 <jwb> one sec
18:06:33 * nirik is a bit worried about npm package manager.
18:06:36 <jwb> last week we decided to vote en bloc for features that have no
objections
18:06:47 <sgallagh> We need to sort out an official packaging policy, which I'm
going to start brainstorming at FUDCon, but the packages that have gone in so far are
taking the slightly hackish symlink approach that avoids bundling.
As I mentioned to sgallagh in one of the node module review bugs
earlier, symlinking to deps isn't a "hack that avoids bundling"--it's
the way upstream intends things to work. See the npm FAQ [1] for some
of the rationale behind it.
18:07:02 <notting> nirik: how does that work exactly? rpm-installed modules are
registered in a local npm database too?
npm doesn't use a database, it just checks a set of well-known paths
(listed in `man npm-folders` [3]). My RPMs install into the global
module path, /usr/lib/node_modules, so npm finds them just fine.
18:07:04 <t8m> jwb, I suppose this one is not such case - I think some
discussion about npm is relevant
18:07:20 <abadger1999> sgallagh: <nod> I am a little afraid of the explosion
of js packages without JS guidelines.
18:07:30 <jwb> t8m, sure. but we could get those without objection out of the
way first... otherwise we're just going to go through them all anyway
18:07:38 <sgallagh> Yeah, I can understand that. I'm learning as I go here as
well.
18:07:48 <nirik> notting: my understanding is that it's a per user install type
of thing... or per app tree.
18:08:06 <mmaslano> sgallagh: so how the npm is working?
18:08:09 <nirik> so, no different than some of the other $lang things.
18:08:34 <t8m> mmaslano, could you please propose which features are
uncontroversial and can be voted together after we close discussing this feature?
18:08:38 <sgallagh> We haven't gotten that far yet. We've (Well, mostly T.C.
Hollingsworth) been packaging the dependencies for npm
18:08:44 <mmaslano> t8m: yes
18:09:01 <mitr> AFAICS there isn't a local database - but a per-project
dependency subtree into which a command can symlink the globally-installed libraries
Exactly.
18:09:03 <sgallagh> We're trying to keep things to a common location and we're
looking into working with upstream to add a set of search paths rather than the
hackish symlinking we're doing in the packages.
Again, as I mentioned in the bug [1], node supports search paths just
fine, but our packages will infect the node module search path with
all RPM-installed modules and break upstream's desired module
isolation.
18:10:16 * nirik is conditionally +1, but would like guidelines and the
packages that meet those guidelines.
18:10:18 <abadger1999> sgallagh: k. If we can get to the point of common
location, documentation on how to do the symlinking, and naming/versioning that's
probably enough to get an initial set of guidelines.
The common location is defined by the %{nodejs_sitelib} macro as
%{_prefix}/lib/node_modules, and is equivalent to where `npm install
-g` would install packages, which it defines as "$(npm prefix
-g)/node_modules". Even a vanilla npm installation from upstream will
work fine with this.
The symlinking is achieved using the %nodejs_symlink_deps RPM macro,
which points to a trivial Python script that reads the dependencies
out of the JSON metadata included with every node module and does the
necessary symlinking and should be run at the end of the %install
section of every node module RPM.
I figured the naming guidelines would follow python, ruby, et. al.
with "nodejs-" prefixes for libraries and regular names for apps.
This stuff is mostly already covered by the draft packaging guidelines
[4] I wrote and linked to in the Scope section of the NodeJS Feature
page. They're a little rough around the edges at the moment but I
hope to clean them up and provide a detailed rationale for some of the
stuff unique to Node in the next few days.
18:15:45 <notting> +1
18:15:46 <abadger1999> mitr: +1
18:15:50 <jwb> sure +1
18:15:50 <pjones> mitr: +1
18:15:51 <sgallagh> mitr: I'm +1 to that (and speaking as the feature owner,
sure)
18:15:55 <nirik> +1
18:16:12 <t8m> +1
18:16:28 <mmaslano> +1
18:16:35 <mitr> (that's the FESCo /feature side; given that these are new
packages, there's little integration concern. OTOH, perhaps FPC might want to object
to adding _any_ node.js packages now when guidelines don't exist)
18:17:12 <mitr> I'm not sure we have a precedent/established practice WRT new
languages
18:17:25 <sgallagh> mitr: I think that's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. As
this is new territory, some of the issues we're discovering will only be possible to
document when we have nested deps.
18:17:28 <mitr> perhaps we should establish one?
+1, it would be nice to have a procedure for doing this kind of stuff
in the future.
18:17:28 <abadger1999> with my FPC hat, I do kinda -- but hopefully sgallagh
can sit down with enough of us FPC people at fudcon to get something workable by next
week.
18:17:35 <pjones> mitr: I think we just did
18:17:47 <mitr> pjones: only as long as someone remembers this meeting
18:17:50 <mmaslano> #agreed NodeJS is approved; for the feature to be
considered complete, packaging guidelines must be approved (+8,-0)
18:18:02 <mitr> sgallagh: yes
Thanks, everyone!
-T.C.
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=891213#c5
[2]
https://npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#I-installed-something-globally-but-I-can-t-require-it
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts:Node.js
