[Opensim-dev] Raise minimum mono version to 2.6

Ilan Tochner ilan at kitely.com
Sun Jan 27 22:28:18 UTC 2013 

We use Linux too and have downloaded and used versions of mono that were
not officially supported by the distro/version we used. There are
alternative repositories people can use that are just a Google search away.

IMO, supporting outdated mono versions is a luxury we can't afford in our
volunteer-based project where the few developers that contribute code are
focused on modern mono versions.

We won't be spending resources on supporting old mono versions but I assume
from your reply that you will be. As you are one of the people who help
move OpenSim forward, this use of your time will negatively effect most
OpenSim users as your time could have been much better spent improving
OpenSim for modern versions of mono (I'm being liberal calling the 2 year
old mono 2.10 release modern).

Your time, your decision but your choice to spend it on outdated middleware
will negatively effect OpenSim's progress. It really is your call, I've
said my say about the subject.

Cheers,

Ilan Tochner
Co-Founder and CEO
Kitely Ltd.



On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 11:26 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:

> Since you have already stated that you will not support older
> versions, our decision will not affect you in any way.
>
> We have, for a long time, used mono 2.4 as the base simply because
> versions of distros in common use don't offer it as part of their
> repo. OpenSim targets not only Windows users but all operating
> systems, including Linux. As long as people use versions of Linux
> that don't natively supply 2.10, we cannot make it our baseline.
> That is simply not open for discussion.
>
> Melanie
>
> On 27/01/2013 21:56, Ilan Tochner wrote:
> > That's all well and good but saying we support mono version 2.6 and
> > actually supporting it are two very different things.
> >
> > Who here is willing to spend their time fixing problems that only appear
> in
> > versions before mono 2.10? (this isn't a rhetorical question, if you are
> > willing to commit to doing so then please reply and let the group know)
> >
> > If anyone is, do you think that doing so is better use of our limited
> > development resources than telling the person who had the problem to just
> > upgrade to a slightly more modern version of mono that can be easily
> > installed?
> >
> > It makes sense not to drop support for old operating systems, as they
> > usually can't be easily upgraded, but installing a newer version of mono
> is
> > very simple when there are repositories you can just apt get / rpm it
> from.
> >
> > What exactly will be served by saying mono 2.6 is supported when no one
> > will invest (waste?) their time debugging for it? Wouldn't our users be
> > better served by having OpenSim run as best as it can (given our limited
> > resources) on a better performing version of mono that those users can
> > easily install?
> >
> > I know Kitely won't be spending resources on debugging for old mono
> > releases so my only horse in this is wanting OpenSim to advance as
> quickly
> > as it can without leaving people behind. Setting mono 2.10 as the
> baseline
> > makes it easier for this open source dev community to accomplish this
> goal.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Ilan Tochner
> > Co-Founder and CEO
> > Kitely Ltd.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It has always been our policy to use the _lowest_ version of Mono
> >> that we can get by on to support the largest possible number of
> >> configurations and systems.
> >>
> >> This is not going to change.
> >>
> >> The feature required by recent code additions is found in Mono 2.6,
> >> so we are discussing Mono 2.6 now. We are not discussing Mono 2.10.
> >>
> >> Melanie
> >>
> >> On 27/01/2013 15:32, Ilan Tochner wrote:
> >> > If, as we both agree, OpenSim works differently with different
> versions
> >> of
> >> > mono then people are going to report bugs that exist when OpenSim is
> run
> >> on
> >> > mono versions prior to 2.10 that don't exist with mono version 2.10
> and
> >> > later.
> >> >
> >> > How many people are there in the OpenSim dev community that still
> >> actively
> >> > use a mono version prior to 2.10? In fact, AFAIK, many devs are
> already
> >> > looking to see when they can safely move to mono 3.0. So, who is
> going to
> >> > work on fixing bugs that no longer exist with mono 2.10 and later? If
> no
> >> > ones is going to work on doing that then we can't honestly say that
> mono
> >> > 2.6 or 2.8 are still supported.
> >> >
> >> > If we intend to have new OpenSim users, we should have them using the
> >> mono
> >> > version with which they'll get the best experience with the existing /
> >> > future code base. It doesn't help anyone if they use an outdated
> version
> >> of
> >> > mono and find that the problems they encounter aren't going to be
> >> addressed
> >> > because they no longer exist with newer versions of mono.
> >> >
> >> > Cheers,
> >> >
> >> > Ilan Tochner
> >> > Co-Founder and CEO
> >> > Kitely Ltd.
> >> >
> >> > On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Dahlia Trimble <
> dahliatrimble at gmail.com
> >> >wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Nobody is asking you to use an older version. The minimum version is
> >> >> simply the earliest version that would be required to run
> OpenSimulator.
> >> >> Anyone is free to use any later version if they so choose.
> >> >>
> >> >> It's also not true that later versions are necessarily better. I've
> >> >> personally had to disable features in OpenSimulator and remove them
> from
> >> >> core due to newer versions of Mono which introduced new bugs that
> made
> >> such
> >> >> features unusable.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 1:05 AM, Ilan Tochner <ilan at kitely.com>
> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>> Mono 2.10 was released Feb 15th, 2011, i.e almost two years ago. I
> >> don't
> >> >>> think there is any target platform that mono 2.6 runs on that
> doesn't
> >> have
> >> >>> mono 2.10 working on it as well.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> There have been many bug fixes in mono between the 2.6 release and
> the
> >> >>> 2.10 release, some of which can definitely effect OpenSim
> performance
> >> and
> >> >>> stability. Who would choose to use the older mono version when a
> >> better one
> >> >>> has been available for at least two years? If someone reports a
> problem
> >> >>> with OpenSim I think we should require them to at least test it
> using
> >> mono
> >> >>> 2.10 so we can rule out the older mono being the cause of the
> problem.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Cheers,
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Ilan Tochner
> >> >>> Co-Founder and CEO
> >> >>> Kitely Ltd.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 4:28 AM, Dahlia Trimble <
> >> dahliatrimble at gmail.com>wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>>> I think the point is raise it to the minimum version which supports
> >> the
> >> >>>> codebase. If there was some feature in 2.10 that did not exist in
> 2.6
> >> and
> >> >>>> that feature was required for proper execution, then 2.10 would be
> a
> >> better
> >> >>>> target. Otherwise it would just be forcing people to upgrade who
> >> would not
> >> >>>> otherwise need to.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> There's nothing stopping anyone from upgrading to 2.10 if they
> desire,
> >> >>>> however, requiring a higher version than is really necessary limits
> >> >>>> potential users of the software to those who are able to install
> those
> >> >>>> versions in their setups. If a goal of OpenSimulator developers is
> >> wide
> >> >>>> adoption, then it makes sense to have it be usable on as many
> existing
> >> >>>> hardware/software configurations as possible.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Ilan Tochner <ilan at kitely.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>> I second setting 2.10 as the base. If we'll be forcing people to
> >> >>>>> upgrade I think we should upgrade to the latest stable release and
> >> not to
> >> >>>>> one that is outdated.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> If OpenSim works fine with 3.0 then I'd vote for it to be the
> base.
> >> If
> >> >>>>> we're still calling OpenSim alpha we should at least get the
> >> benefits of
> >> >>>>> doing so. Supporting old versions of mono is a waste of developer
> >> resources.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> Cheers,
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> Ilan Tochner
> >> >>>>> Co-Founder and CEO
> >> >>>>> Kitely Ltd.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 9:20 PM, Trinity <trinity93 at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>> if we can get a way with it why not go to 2.10 else quickly be
> out
> >> of
> >> >>>>>> date agian
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>> On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 9:38 AM, James Hughes <
> >> >>>>>> jamesh at bluewallgroup.com> wrote:
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>> +1
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>> On 01/24/2013 10:29 PM, Justin Clark-Casey wrote:
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>> Whilst writing JsonStore regression tests this evening, I hit
> the
> >> >>>>>>>> problem where modInvoke script methods of more than 4
> parameters
> >> >>>>>>>> cannot
> >> >>>>>>>> be registered on Mono 2.4.3 as it doesn't implement the
> required
> >> >>>>>>>> larger
> >> >>>>>>>> multi-parameter Func generic types.
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>> Therefore, I want to bump the minimum Mono version for
> >> OpenSimulator
> >> >>>>>>>> up
> >> >>>>>>>> to 2.6 which was released more than 3 years ago. This also
> >> involves
> >> >>>>>>>> bumping the minimum .net framework version up to 4.0, as also
> >> >>>>>>>> detailed
> >> >>>>>>>> at [1]
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>> [1] http://opensimulator.org/**mantis/view.php?id=5971<
> >> http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view.php?id=5971>
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>> Any comments?
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>> ______________________________**_________________
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> >> >>>>>>> https://lists.berlios.de/**mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev<
> >> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev>
> >> >>>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>>
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> >> >>>>>>
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>>
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