Re: fabric3

[Jeff Forcier]

Hello friends! It's been a couple years since the below chat, but I'm
finally at the point where pulling 'fabric3' back into Fabric's 1.x
branch is blocking my other plans (namely dropping Python 2 support
everywhere else). As I didn't find any actual PR filed about this, I
just soldiered ahead, since it shouldn't be all that much work (famous
last words).

What I've done so far:

- Made sure I could still test Fabric-primary's "v1" branch under
Python 2 in a Docker image. Still works! Mostly. Had to post a tiny
test-only fix.
- Made sure the tests passed under Mathias' master branch on
Py2+Py3(.6). Again, mostly! Another test-only fix got us to 100%.
- Merged the head of v1 (which as noted earlier, was just some bits n
bobs from 1.14.1 release) into my copy of Mathias' branch. Still good.
- Gave the result a little CircleCI config since it only takes a
couple minutes and would be a nice "proof of work" besides "works on
my machine".
    - Note that as with my other projects and Fab 2.x, CircleCI only
does Python 3 - not Python 2. But I don't think anybody was TOO
worried about the stability of this line on Python 2...
    - 
https://app.circleci.com/pipelines/github/fabric/fabric/118/workflows/ea65458b-ccf7-40b0-9b8b-d7107001fbc4
- Early steps here helped me discover a Python 3.9 compat issue (think
because they axed the old _dummy_thread allowing 'import thread' to
work) in a test dependency (fudge) - it doesn't look easily worked
around
    - but as it's a test-only dep, I am currently happy just saying
"test on 3.6-3.8", esp since I don't exactly expect us to post many
commits to this line going forwards!

For ease of viewing (the compare-only page seems a bit "off", eg
doesn't show my recent commits) I made this PR:

    https://github.com/fabric/fabric/pull/2205

but I'm expecting to just merge & release it as v1.15 (likely this
coming Friday-ish) unless somebody points out a Serious Problem™ I'm
not seeing. Let me know what y'all think!

Kindly yours, 7 years after the fork,
Jeff

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 12:16 PM Mathias Ertl <mati@er.tl> wrote:
>
> Hi Jeff,
>
> On 6/15/20 9:40 PM, Jeff Forcier wrote:
> > I am definitely willing to merge PRs that add Python 3 compatibility,
>
> That's *really* great news. Thanks!
>
> > though my assumption was that we'd do it as a single PR that
> > approximates the diff between the official repo's v1 branch, and
> > fabric3, and treat it in the changelog/messaging as "were you using
> > fabric3 from PyPI? Fabric 1.15 is now effectively the same thing! come
> > on back!!"
> >
> > Were you intending to follow some other multi-step process or are we in
> > alignment here? Open to whatever, as long as there's a good rationale.
>
> Well, I'm a bit split:
>
> On the one hand, I just cloned my fork again and ran the test suite with
> Python 3.8.3. Only one test fails
> (test_network.TestNetwork.test_connect_does_not_prompt_password_when_ssh_raises_channel_exception),
> and that error seems fixable. So we could do just what you're saying.
>
> On the other hand, Fabric3 did see some usage, but certainly not as much
> as it should. Some parts I used at work, but definitely not all of them.
> My experience from porting software like this to Python3 is to take it
> slow: First fix syntax errors, then fix obvious problems that don't
> break compatibility (e.g. imports via six) and so on.
>
> The advantage of the latter approach is that we have some way cleaner
> commits and PRs where we can make sure that we don't break anything.
>
> So in any case let me know what you want :-)
>
> Mat
>
>
>
> >
> > FYI: I've been intending to migrate our CI from Travis to Circle, which
> > may play into the timing of this; however I'll likely only allow that to
> > block the merge if the Travis env is broken and needs nontrivial fixes
> > (as it seems a waste to spend more time on Travis if I am planning to
> > leave). I am /hoping/ to look at that this week.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jeff
> >
> > On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 12:32 PM Mathias Ertl <mati@er.tl
> > <mailto:mati@er.tl>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hi Jeff + mailing list,
> >
> >     This thread unfortunately did not have a follow up that I can see, so
> >     whats up with making Fabric 1.x Py3 compatible?
> >
> >     If I get a statement from you that you're willing to merge PRs that
> >     start with py3 compatibility, I'm willing to start working on this, or
> >     of course maybe za3k wants to work with this, I'm willing to help him
> >     get started (I have ported many older Py2 projects to py3 at my old
> >     job).
> >
> >
> >     Mat
> >
> >     On 5/27/20 5:50 PM, Jeff Forcier wrote:
> >      > Hi all, and thanks for putting this together, Zachary.
> >      >
> >      > Just to chip in with my own context:
> >      >
> >      > - I'd been pondering making this connection myself lately (due to
> >     the
> >      > delays in getting Fabric 2 to parity and now Python 2's official
> >     EOL). Hi!
> >      > - Fabric 1.15 was IIRC a single small feature-add, so if there
> >     are no
> >      > big changes on the fork besides just the Python 3 compatibility,
> >      > unifying them should still be relatively easy, mechanically speaking.
> >      > - As stated earlier on the list, my main concern with the Py3
> >     compat is
> >      > that Fabric 1's test suite doesn't have as high a % coverage as
> >     I'd like
> >      > (one of many impetuses for v2) but at this point I'm guessing
> >     fabric3's
> >      > usage has been widespread enough, for long enough, that any
> >     serious bugs
> >      > have already been found.
> >      >    - Curious what, if any, you ran into though - Paramiko went
> >     through
> >      > quite a lot of instability in its own Py3 journey...
> >      > - Re: the fabric3 name on pip - no rush on figuring that out, for
> >      > multiple reasons.
> >      >    - At the VERY least we would need to wait til stats show most
> >     users
> >      > of fabric3 had migrated to either post-merge fabric1, or fabric2.
> >     Not in
> >      > a rush to pull the rug out from under anyone.
> >      >    - I'm hoping that Fabric 3.x, 4.x etc will be non full
> >     rewrites and
> >      > thus there will be no need for in place side by side upgrades -
> >     which
> >      > was the only real reason to even need a 'fabric2' on pypi (and,
> >     thus,
> >      > ever a mainstream 'fabric3')
> >      >    - By the time we get there I'd mostly be concerned about user
> >      > confusion (intending to get 'fabric==3.x' but installing 'fabric3'
> >      > instead) but that is likely a ways off!
> >      >
> >      > Best,
> >      > Jeff
> >      >
> >      > On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 6:02 PM <za3k@za3k.com
> >     <mailto:za3k@za3k.com> <mailto:za3k@za3k.com <mailto:za3k@za3k.com>>>
> >      > wrote:
> >      >
> >      >     Hi / tag Matthias! I've been talking to the fabric mailing
> >     list (cc'd)
> >      >     and the fabric developer bitprophet (cc'd). The subject is adding
> >      >     python3 support to fabric 1.x (even though 2.x is the latest) as
> >      >     part of
> >      >     making an official package.
> >      >
> >      >     bitprophet, the current state is that this is forked off
> >     1.14.0, only
> >      >     one version behind the latest, and I see no feature additions or
> >      >     changes. It's been marked DEPRECATED for a year because 2.x added
> >      >     python3 support.
> >      >
> >      >     mathiasertl, I'd like to merge your fabric3 work into fabric. No
> >      >     issues,
> >      >     right?
> >      >
> >      >     Also, bitprophet has mentioned that might be helpful there
> >     wasn't a
> >      >     pre-existing 'fabric3' pip package out of his control, in case of
> >      >     future
> >      >     difficulty/confusion with a fabric 3.0 release--I'll leave
> >     ya'll to
> >      >     talk
> >      >     that out.
> >      >
> >      >
> >      >
> >      > --
> >      > Jeff Forcier
> >      > Unix sysadmin; Python engineer
> >      > http://bitprophet.org
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Jeff Forcier
> > Unix sysadmin; Python engineer
> > http://bitprophet.org



-- 
Jeff Forcier
Unix sysadmin; Python engineer
https://bitprophet.org