[ome-devel] Supported ZeroC Ice versions for 5.1 and later releases

[Roger Leigh]

Dear all,

I'd like to review the ZeroC Ice versions which the project currently
supports, so that we can make an informed decision about what we are
willing to support for the upcoming 5.1 (and later) releases.

The first part of the email is a summary of which OS releases support
which versions of Ice.  The second is a proposal for what we could do
based upon this information.


Available Ice releases
----------------------

   Version    Release date  Status upstream
   ---------  ------------  ------------------------
   Ice 3.3.1  23 Mar 2009   Unsupported and obsolete
   Ice 3.4.2  16 Jun 2011   Unsupported and obsolete
   Ice 3.5.1  04 Oct 2013   Supported and current


Windows
-------

   No Ice provided; use ZeroC .msi installer


MacOSX
------

   No Ice provided.  ZeroC installer available (but not compatible with
   all MacOS X versions).  Or use:

   System    Ice version
   --------  ------------------------
   homebrew  3.5.1
   macports  3.4.2 (with 3.3.1 extra)
   fink      N/A

Linux
-----

RHEL:
   N/A (use ZeroC RPMs)

SLES:
   N/A (use ZeroC RPMs)

Debian:

   Release                    Ice version
   -------------------------  -----------
   squeeze  (6.0, oldstable)  3.3.1
   wheezy   (7.0, stable)     3.4.2
   jessie   (8.0?, testing)   3.5.1
   sid      (unstable)        3.5.1

Ubuntu:

   Release              Ice version
   -------------------  -----------
   precise (12.04 LTS)  3.4.2
   saucy   (13.10)      3.4.2
   trusty  (14.04 LTS)  3.5.1

Fedora:

   Release  Ice version
   -------  -----------
   F19      3.5.1
   F20      3.5.1


FreeBSD
-------

   Ports tree provides Ice 3.5.1.


Summary
-------

- Current development versions of all Linux distributions support Ice
   3.5.1.  All upcoming releases will be providing 3.5.1 (or 3.6 as and
   when that arrives).
- Some stable releases support 3.5.1 but most are using 3.4.2.
- Nothing provides 3.3.1 except for Debian oldstable; support for this
   will continue for a time yet (it's planned to make this an "LTS"
   release).

I'm not aware of any system we currently support which can *not* be
upgraded to 3.4.2 or 3.5.1.  Windows users can use the ZeroC
installer.  Mac users can use the installer if they want to risk the
ZeroC package actually working, or they can use homebrew.  Linux users
can use the provided RPMs, or Debian packages.  Or they can build from
source.  Debian oldstable users could rebuild or install the 3.5.1
packages assuming anyone is actually using this obsolete stable
release.

I'm currently working on rebuilding the ZeroC Ice 3.5.1 release on
Windows against Python 2.7, which would allow us to support 3.5.1
across the board on all platforms.


Suggested actions
-----------------

It's quite clear that in all distributions, Ice 3.3.1 has been long
superseded by 3.4.2 and increasingly 3.5.1.  Removal of support for Ice
3.3.1 is possible at this time, and I'd recommend doing so.

While Ice 3.5.1 is current and supported, 3.4.2 is in the stable and LTS
releases of Debian and Ubuntu, respectively, and will be supported by
both for several years.  Continuing to support these would be useful.
However, given that these are the only two which provide it, we could
*if we *really* wanted to*, go all the way to 3.5.1 and require the
installation of a backported version; I can easily push it into Debian
backports and provide a PPA.  This would give us a baseline of 3.5.1 for
all platforms.  Maybe not 5.1 material, but something to consider for
5.2/6.0?

One point to note is that Ice 3.4.2 is /de facto/ broken on most current
systems if you're wanting to use OmeroCpp: it won't compile with the
current (and not-so-current) GCC /or/ clang++ compilers since the
headers are buggy, so you're out of luck unless you use 3.5.1 on these
systems.  From this point of view, the decision is already taken out of
our hands--3.4.2 isn't even buildable on current platforms.  But it will
continue to work on older systems.


tl;dr
-----

- Suggest making 3.4.2 the minimum required Ice version and dropping
   3.3.1 support in our docs and CI infrastructure for 5.1
- Alternatively, if we want to push this more aggressively, make 3.5.1
   the minimum



Any comments?  Are there any systems I've missed which can't be upgraded
from 3.3.1?  Or anything else I've omitted which is relevant?


Regards,
Roger

--
Dr Roger Leigh -- Open Microscopy Environment
Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression,
College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dow Street,
Dundee DD1 5EH Scotland UK   Tel: (01382) 386364

The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096