[GeoNode-devel] GeoNode dependencies breaking & Pypi consistency

[Travis Brundage]

Hi all,

Recently I have seen some core GeoNode behaviour breaking due to changes in
our dependencies. This isn't the first time it's happened. What happens is
that we have many dependencies pulling in the latest version via >= in our
requirements, but something changes which conflicts with current technology
or otherwise is broken, causing core GeoNode to break as well.

In addition, I'd like for us to have consistency in regards to GeoNode and
its sub projects in pypi. Establishing the pypi repo as consistent with the
official repos for the dependencies will ensure changes are visible and
(hopefully) reviewed. This will help at least partially with preventing
broken dependencies. One possibility is introducing some automation here
through a continuous integration tool, so there are regular builds to pypi
straight off the repos in GeoNode. This method may help establish a
consistent cycle and also ensure we're diligent about quality in changes to
the code.

For the dependencies breaking, we can start pinning versions in our
requirements (that is, using == instead of >= in requirements.txt). The
upside of this is we will have consistent, expected behaviour that won't
change due to updates. The downside of this is we won't necessarily have
the most recent versions of dependencies, which we will want to
occasionally update. I feel pinning versions makes sense, but we should
make sure to update dependencies regularly. Before making this change, we
should check what versions are actually being used and working with
GeoNode, as >= will pull later versions, so simply doing a find+replace of
>= to == won't be correct.

Cheers,
Travis

-- 
Travis Brundage
Software Engineer | Boundless
tbrundage at boundlessgeo.com
250.888.2820
@boundlessgeo
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