Should install be based on a release as opposed to latest git state?

[pjfanning]

otava/docs/INSTALL.md

Line 29 in 5502d6b

pipx install git+ssh://git@github.com/apache/otava

I am not an expert on pip but this appears to support that pip will get the code from git as opposed to from an approved release.

[dave2wave]

It's required that the source code of a release be on a download page on otava.apache.org and that page refer to resources on download.apache.org/otava (or dlcdn.apache.org for the tar balls)

While the incubator may approve a first release without this the moderators of announce@apache.org will not let the announcement through.

Every ASF project should have a download page that can be copied.

[dave2wave]

The Airflow project knows how to publish to PyPi (and also PyPi-Test).

[henrikingo]

Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? We would need to have a release first so that the documentation can point to it.

At this point I would say it is ok for us to just produce a release and not announce it. We would like to create a release that is a snapshot of the code donated to ASF, with the only changes being the name change, license headers, supported python versions, dependencies, etc... other ASF related changes. Until we do that, we have intentionally not been very eager to receive new contributors or non-trivial features.

Also, it seems to me we need to produce the source release, so that we can upload a PyPI package, to which the documentation can then refer.

[pjfanning]

I don't think this needs immediate fixing. You can fix this after you do an Apache release.

[Gerrrr]

Hi @pjfanning ,

Does #68 solve this issue?

[pjfanning]

@Gerrrr I am not a pip expert. All I recognised was that there was a git address in your doc and that is gone. I have no background to know where pip install apache-otava gets its install from. Could you work with Otava colleagues to verify this?

[Gerrrr]

pip install apache-otava installs it from PyPI, the most canonical way to install Python packages (like maven-central for Java).

I guess, my question is, as Apache incubating project, do we need to provide extra documentation on how to install from sources?

[pjfanning]

ASF requires that what you install in PyPI is based on a release. Otherwise, PyPI is fine. It might be worth asking ASF project that use PyPI for specifics. Apache Airflow is one.

[henrikingo]

As I caused this exchange in a review comment, let me join directly and rephrase: The question is whether:

a) ASF requires us to prominently in our documentation cover installation (or in any case, download and untar) from the official release, which is the source tarfile. OR
b) it is ok to document the most common way to install the project - in our case pip install ... and in some other case compiled binaries or a maven repository.

It seems from your answer b is ok as long as the derived (or, convenience) installation is based on an official ASF source release. This of course is the logical/natural answer too, now that I think about it.

And most crucially, in that case #68 indeed satisfies this issue.

[Gerrrr]

Closing this issue then.