TL;DR: Projects can use bindep.txt to document in a programmatic way their binary dependencies
Python developers record their dependencies on other Python packages in requirements.txt and test-requirements.txt. But some packages havedependencies outside of python and we should document thesedependencies as well so that operators, developers, and CI systems know what needs to be available for their programs. Bindep is a solution to this, it allows a repo to document binarydependencies in a single file. It even enablies specification of which distribution the package belongs to - Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, RHEL, SLES and Ubuntu have different package names - and allows profiles, like a test profile. Bindep is one of the tools the OpenStack Infrastructure team has written and maintains. It is in use by already over 130 repositories. For better bindep adoption, in the just released bindep 2.1.0 we have changed the name of the default file used by bindep from other-requirements.txt to bindep.txt and have pushed changes [3] to master branches of repositories for this. Projects are encouraged to create their own bindep files. Besides documenting what is required, it also gives a speedup in running tests since you install only what you need and not all packages that some other project might need and are installed by default. Each test system comes with a basic installation and then we either add the repo defined package list or the large default list. In the OpenStack CI infrastructure, we use the "test" profile for installation of packages. This allows projects to document their run time dependencies - the default packages - and the additional packages needed for testing. Be aware that bindep is not used by devstack based tests, those have their own way to document dependencies. A side effect is that your tests run faster, they have less packages to install. A Ubuntu Xenial test node installs 140 packages and that can take between 2 and 5 minutes. With a smaller bindep file, this can change. Let's look at the log file for a normal installation with using the default dependencies: 2 upgraded, 139 newly installed, 0 to remove and 41 not upgraded Need to get 148 MB of archives. After this operation, 665 MB of additional disk space will be used. Compare this with the openstack-manuals repostiry that uses bindep - this example was 20 seconds and not minutes: 0 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 43 not upgraded. Need to get 35.8 MB of archives. After this operation, 128 MB of additional disk space will be used. If you want to learn more about bindep, read the Infra Manual on package requirements [1] or the bindep manual [2]. If you have further questions about bindep, feel free to ask the Infra team on #openstack-infra. Thanks to Anita for reviewing and improving this blog post and to the OpenStack Infra team that maintains bindep, especially to Jeremy Stanley and Robert Collins. Note I'm sending this out while not all our test clouds have images that know about bindep.txt (they only handle other-requirements.txt). The infra team is in the process of ensuring updated images in all our test clouds for later today. Thanks, Paul! Andreas References: [1] http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/drivers.html#package-requirements [2] http://docs.openstack.org/infra/bindep/ [3] https://review.openstack.org/#/q/branch:master+topic:bindep-mv -- Andreas Jaeger aj@{suse.com,opensuse.org} Twitter/Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126 __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
