[netmod] comments on YANG versioning

[Andy Bierman <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

A few comments on the netmod meeting yesterday

1) what is a bugfix?
It is not encouraging that the DT cannot agree on the scope of a bugfix.
But not sure it matters if NBC updates can occur for any reason.
IMO it is easy to define a bugfix in the IETF -- it is called an Errata.
If an Errata is approved for a YANG module in an RFC then it is a bugfix.


2) SEMVER to the rescue?
If every module release can be its own feature release train then the value
of
ascending numeric identifiers is greatly diminished. The (m) and (M) tags
do not really help.  I strongly agree with the comment that cherry-picking
new
features can (and should) be done with deviations.  Updates of old
revisions needs to be for bugfixes only.

I prefer the OpenConfig "SEMVER Classic" rather than introducing a new
incompatible complex numbering scheme to support something that
should not be done anyway.

3) Bundles and compatibility modules
I strongly agree this solution approach is far better than treating every
revision
as a separate feature release train.  I don't see how I am going to
track the major.minor.patch for 100 different modules.  SEMVER is not
very useful for telling if module A works with B, C, and D. Import by SEMVER
will probably be OK at first, but become too error-prone after awhile.

4) Automation tools
Ad-hoc WEB pages from IANA do not cut it anymore.
We need a way to get patch versions of modules published and usable
by automation tools (without an RFC) with just the Errata report as a patch.
SEMVER requires that a module be released with the change but this is not
that practical.
Think how yocto works, using a base source version of a package + patches.
(IMO we need YANG Packages, which would serve as recipes
for a set of modules, features, annotations, patches and deviations, that
have been
tested to work together.)

5) YANG 1.2 vs Extensions
IMO a new YANG version would be better than extensions, especially to
fix status-stmt, import-by-revision, deviations, and add annotation,
patch, and many other new mechanisms to help backward compatibility.


Andy