[Opensim-dev] Raise minimum .net framework version to 4.0 and mono version to 2.8 (with 2.10 strongly recommended) in 2Q2013

Dahlia Trimble dahliatrimble at gmail.com
Tue Jan 29 18:29:56 UTC 2013 

Not all of the users of OpenSimulator are sysadmins. Have you ever worked
in a corporate environment? Often the computers that people use are managed
by a central IT department and deviating from the long-term supported IT
mandated solution is not allowed. Similar situations exist in education.
OpenSimulator is not necessarily designed for the sole benefit of a few
for-profit grids, in fact, much of the code base has been contributed by
people who use *and develop* it in such restricted environments. This is
true for content development as well.

Likewise, not all of the contributors have a large R&D budget. For some,
upgrading to the latest and greatest is not an option, in fact, it could
disable other applications they need to use a shared computer for. Some of
these users have contributed major functionality to the code base. As
stewards of the code base, we need to keep the needs of *all* users in
mind. These are some of the reasons these traditions exist.


On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Ilan Tochner <ilan at kitely.com> wrote:

> It's nice to want to support old Linux versions but anyone who is going to
> install OpenSim on Linux, which is not something anyone who isn't a capable
> sysadmin will do, can easily set up that machine with a modern version of
> Ubunto where Mono 2.10 is supported (or use some other distro and manually
> install OpenSim from a third-party website). Had we said that upgrading to
> Mono 2.10 would make it harder for non-technical people to run OpenSim then
> there would have been some (small) justification for holding back on
> advancing OpenSim. However, to do so in order to save sysadmins from
> upgrading their outdated distros is putting the needs of the very few above
> those of the great majority of OpenSim users.
>
> Delaying advancement of a software project that is labeled Alpha for the
> stated reason places enterprise-level legacy support requirements on an
> open-source project that is developed and used by people that have nothing
> preventing them from upgrading their systems (Windows and Mac users have no
> problem using the latest Mono versions as it is). No end-user is going to
> be affected by this upgrade, if any of them is using Linux at home (which I
> doubt more than a few dozen are) then they are likely either using Ubunto
> in the first place and/or are capable of downloading and installing Mono
> from a third-party site.
>
> How many people are going to be served by delaying an upgrade to .NET 4.0?
> How many people will have an inferior OpenSim because of that delay?
>
> It's not that we're preventing anyone from using the existing OpenSim
> version. We're just saying that if you want to use the latest version on
> Linux you need to have Mono 2.10 or later installed. If it doesn't come
> with your distro then search for a third-party site that provides it and
> download it from there. People who can't be bothered to doing either one of
> those things can continue using the existing OpenSim version.
>
> Again, let's focus on advancing OpenSim and not on saving some sysadmins
> the few hours it will take them to install and setup Mono and/or a new
> Linux distro on their server(s).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ilan Tochner
> Co-Founder and CEO
> Kitely Ltd.
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:16 PM, Mike Chase <
> mike.chase at alternatemetaverse.com> wrote:
>
>> Just curious.  Call me crazy and stuff but why are you worrying about
>> ancient distros with LTS for cases where upgrades to Mono are clearly
>> available.  And this is to support software that is perpetually alpha?  So
>> you are concerned about adopting .NET 4.0 features because someone might
>> be
>> running an ancient version of debian or Ubuntu presumably in some
>> production
>> scenarios using software you've branded as Alpha.
>>
>> Why don't we call OpenSim what it is.  A research project.   People have
>> taken and with considerable effort doe some hardening to that sufficient
>> to
>> run a production grid.  But it is what it is.
>>
>> And sorry Justin I don't meant to jump on you. You're a good guy.  You
>> have
>> to deal with the other members of a board drawing lines in the sand left
>> and
>> right that suit themselves and their own business interests.  Sorry
>> Melanie,
>> the "it's never gonna happen" comments are so out of place for a board
>> member of an open public project.  Really you have no business being in
>> the
>> position you are. But that's what it is as well.
>>
>> Ok enough ranting.  If you feel that upgrading to the 4.0 .NET apis would
>> benefit OpenSim as a whole (I do) then do it.  Deciding what versions of
>> mono to use and what distribution to use it on are deployment
>> considerations
>> that someone should be considering carefully based on what they want to
>> use
>> the software for.  And if they are trying to run anything close to a
>> production service then they need to be aware of the issues involved in
>> the
>> various versions of mono and make their choice based on that.
>>
>> I doubt I get a vote but if I did I'd vote to advance the API version of
>> .NET and pick up the new features therein.  Document the dependencies and
>> let people doing deployment sort out the environment that best meets their
>> requirements.  My 2 cents.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de
>> [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Justin
>> Clark-Casey
>> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 10:42 PM
>> To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
>> Subject: [Opensim-dev] Raise minimum .net framework version to 4.0 and
>> mono
>> version to 2.8 (with 2.10 strongly recommended) in 2Q2013
>>
>> After some further investigation, it turns out that Mono 2.6 does not make
>> the higher parameter Func calls available unless it has been built in a
>> special preview mode.  This is not available on at least the Ubuntu Mono
>> package and I suspect most, if not all, of the other distro packages as
>> well.
>>
>> Therefore, the minimum version of Mono that will use them is 2.8 (for
>> which
>> C# 4.0 is the default).  Polling the earliest supported release versions
>> of
>> various Linux distros, the situation is
>>
>> Debian 6.0 (squeeze)    Mono 2.6.7
>> Ubuntu 8.04 LTS         Mono 1.2.6
>> Ubuntu 10.04 LTS        Mono 2.4
>> Ubuntu 11.10            Mono 2.10.8.1
>> Ubuntu 12.04 LTS        Mono 2.10.8.1
>> openSUSE 11.4           Mono 2.8.2
>> openSUSE 12.1           Mono 2.10.6
>> CentOS 5                no Mono package
>> CentOS 6                no Mono package
>>
>> I see Debian squeeze as the sticking point here.  Debian 7.0 (wheezy) will
>> ship Mono 2.10.8.1 and has been frozen since 2012-06-30.  Debian does not
>> work to release dates so it's impossible to say when it will be released,
>> though the indications are that it will be in the first half of this year.
>> Even when it is released, Debian squeeze will most probably be supported
>> until early 2014.
>>
>> In light of this, I am going to recommend that we do not update the
>> minimum
>> version of Mono until Debian wheezy is released.  We've already
>> effectively
>> been living with this situation for a while so I don't think that a bit
>> longer is going to hurt, though making modInvoke() properly useable is
>> important.  If wheezy is not released by the time that OpenSimulator 0.7.6
>> is here, which I anticipate being shortly after Easter, then we can
>> revisit
>> the topic.
>>
>> This means that existing binary packages will continue to be compiled
>> against .NET 3.5 (though ironically the current 0.7.5-RC packages have
>> been
>> compiled to work with Mono >2.8 only, which will be fixed for the final
>> release).
>>
>> When the update occurs, everything will compile and run against Mono 2.8
>> but
>> Mono 2.10 will be strongly recommended as the Mono 2.8 series has proved
>> considerably buggy in the past.
>>
>> Once the update is made, the target framework will be .net 4.0 rather than
>> .net 3.5.  This will allow c# 4.0 language features to be used and will
>> require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 packages to be installed on
>> Windows.
>>
>> We've already heard arguments both ways so I doubt that it's worth
>> rehashing
>> them.  However, I also think this would be a marginal decision so I
>> welcome
>> any new points.
>>
>> --
>> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
>> OSVW Consulting
>> http://justincc.org
>> http://twitter.com/justincc
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