ABI Compatibility: Updates within a single update stream are likely to maintain ABI backwards compatibility in most cases. Users should be able to consume updates from an update stream without being concerned about breaking applications that depend on that module. A major change introducing an incompatible ABI would normally be expected to require a new version branch.
But this is ultimately a policy decision: there is nothing technical to stop ABI breakage within a version stream. For example, the current RHEL-7 extras stream may break compatibility from time to time, and has done so in the past in certain container platform packages. Our tools should be able to detect incompatible ABI changes as far as possible, but should not prevent them if we have an exceptional case where such a change is desired.
(ABI compatibility here includes anything that may have a compatibility on user or application compatibility, including for example semantics of configuration files, library ABIs, command line option handling and error codes, and so on.)
Constraining the scope of ABI dependency: As preserving ABI on updates is a burden which imposes constraints on our maintenance of a module within a single version branch, we would like the ability to limit the parts of a module to which ABI stability applies. We currently define which packages within a module form the external ABI of the module: this is defined by the maintainer of a given module’s metadata. Conversely, packages not declared as external are implicit internal implementation details of the module.
Defining the external ABI as a set of packages will allow us to:
- Rebase internal packages without constraint from ABI guarantees, removing overhead from the module maintenance burden over time;
- Verify that layered modules or applications depend only on packages defined as external ABI, by checking rpm dependency chains
Lifecycle: Given that we define no formal policy on ABI lifecycle—rather leaving this up to policy—it follows that there is no strong requirement that version numbers of packages within a single update stream have to follow any particular pattern. We can easily rebase a package within an update stream, even adding new features, as long as any claimed backwards compatibility is preserved.
We do need to be concerned about whether 3rd-party application certification is expected to be preserved when such an application depends on a module’s version branch containing rebased packages. This is an important question, and we need to add tooling and policy around it; but for now this is primarily a policy question, and beyond the scope of this document. Different modules may have different appetite for risk and rebases, and hence have different policy around certification.
Parallel Availability: The update streams for different module version branches must be able to coexist in our pipeline and released content, without interfering with each other. If a given base system install has both httpd-2.2 and httpd-2.4 available in different version branches, then it is important that these remain independent.
The update streams must not interfere with each other. If httpd-2.2 is installed, then updating it via yum or dnf should update it to the most recent version in the httpd-2.2 update stream, and must not automatically update it to 2.4. Any dependencies brought in by either must also prevent such interference.
And yet if a certain package does support parallel installation of different version branches at the same time (eg. RHSCLs), then the separate installed versions at any time must each be updatable by their own specific update stream.