[ome-devel] RFC: Changes to the OMERO minimum system requirements for 5.1 and 5.2

[Lee Kamentsky]

Thanks, Roger, I hadn't planned on replying to this, but having a detailed
proposal brings up some questions that are both relevant for our OME
support and more broadly for other community tools (like CellProfiler).

* Centos versions: I'd like to think that my organization is at the
forefront when tracking technology, but we are currently on Centos 6 for
our cluster. I think we'll be moving to 7 within the next year, but I can
see other institutions lagging behind. One positive is that we are moving
toward cloud apps and the applification of OMERO is a huge win that could
make the version problem a moot point.

* Bitness - On one hand, I would love to discard all our 32-bit builds. On
the other, moving the Mac build of CellProfiler to 64 bits has sadly been
an overwhelmingly challenging task due to migration from Carbon to Cocoa
and the difficulty of integrating a Python and Java UI on that platform.
Although solving this is a priority, dropping 32-bit client support on the
Mac could leave us behind on that platform. But I understand the challenge
of maintaining a 32-bit build and realize that it's up to us to do what's
needed to keep pace.

* Python - I can see no compelling reason for our tools to move to 3.x and
we will probably stick with 2.7 or 2.8 if it comes out as long as the
packages we need support 2.x. We have dropped 2.6 support.

* MSVC - you can't buy MSVC 2010 professional any more, although that is
the compiler that's best supported for compiling 64 bit extensions for
Python 3.x. We actually use the Microsoft SDK to compile CellProfiler -
that uses MSVCR90.dll which is one step behind MSVC 2010, but is the
implementation of the C runtime library used in Python 2.7. One important
task for us is to learn how to build Python extensions using MSVC 2013 to
produce assemblies that use MSVCR90.dll instead of the default for MSVC
2013. But, I think it's important that you use tools that people can
actually get, so I would be in favor of supporting the latest and I can
understand dropping support for earlier as long as any binaries loaded by
Python are truly compatible. Informally, I've patched Python's distutils to
make it capable of using MSVC 2013, but I think it needs further patching
to solve the DLL problem.

* Java - we currently build on 1.6 but we would like to track OME and
ImageJ and we would welcome a community decision to build on 7. The
situation on OS/X 10.7 and Java upgrades on OS/X in general is a little
daunting for some of our users, but I think the community consensus will
tell us (CellProfiler) what's best to do, so we appreciate the insight and
direction that you're supplying.

--Lee

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Roger Leigh <rleigh at dundee.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Prior to the release of OMERO 5.1, the OME team have been reviewing our
> support for the various software components we depend upon.  A proposal
> of the versions we intend to support for OMERO 5.1 and 5.2 is detailed
> here:
> https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/omero5.1/sysadmins/version-
> requirements.html
>
> Our resources to test and support multiple versions of each component
> have limits, and older versions of components lack security support and
> updates.  We need to deprecate and drop support for older versions over
> time, as well as limit the number of versions we support at any one
> time.  Versions for which we will drop support for in 5.2 are marked as
> deprecated in 5.1.  Notable here are the deprecation and dropping of
> support for Java 6 and older PostgreSQL versions, but please look at the
> above link for full details.
>
> Your feedback would be appreciated.  If any of these proposed changes
> are problematic, please do provide us with the details of your system
> (OS version and software versions) so that we can try to accommodate
> support for it where possible.
>
>
> Regards,
> Roger Leigh
>
> --
> 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
> _______________________________________________
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> ome-devel at lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk
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>
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