The HTCondor grid scheduler and resource manager follows the old Linux kernel versioning scheme: for release x.y.z, if y is an even number it’s a “stable” series that get bugfixes, behavior changes and major features go on odd-numbered y. For a long time, the HTCondor packages in Fedora used the development series. However, this leads to a choice between introducing behavior changes when a new development HTCondor release comes out or pinning a Fedora release to a particular HTCondor release which means no bugfixes.
This ignores the Fedora Packaging Guidelines, too:
As a result, we should avoid major updates of packages within a stable release. Updates should aim to fix bugs, and not introduce features, particularly when those features would materially affect the user or developer experience. The update rate for any given release should drop off over time, approaching zero near release end-of-life; since updates are primarily bugfixes, fewer and fewer should be needed over time.
Although the HTCondor developers do an excellent job of preserving backward compatibility, behavior changes can happen between x.y.1 and x.y.2. HTCondor is not a major part of Fedora, but we should still attempt to be good citizens.
After discussing the matter with upstream and the other co-maintainers, I’ve submitted a self-contained change for Fedora 25 that will
- Upgrade the HTCondor version to 8.6
- Keep HTCondor in Fedora on the stable release series going forward
Most of the bug reports against the condor-* packages have been packaging issues and not HTCondor bugs, so upstream isn’t losing a massive testing resource here. I think this will be a net benefit to Fedora since it prevents unexpected behavior changes and makes it more likely that I’ll package upstream releases as soon as they come out.