Tweak structure of the plugins repository

[itowlson]

The plugin installation code expects the manifest for the latest version of the plugin to be at zarjazz.json, with previous versions at zarjazz@1.4.0.json, zarjazz@1.3.0.json, etc.

A slightly vexing side effect of this is that in order for a plugin developer to update a plugin, they must move zarjazz.json to zarjazz@1.5.0.json and then put the new latest in its place. This feels at odds with what feels like a purely additive operation.

It also has the vexing side effect for reviewers of not seeing a clean diff with the new file. Instead they see the old version as a new file, with diffs for URLs, digests, etc. in the "current version" file. It is therefore tricky when reviewing to verify that the old version hasn't changed.

It would be good to tweak the plugin code to allow new versions to be added to the plugins repo in as purely additive a way as possible, with any diffs to existing files being minor and easily verifiable by eye. For example, we could version all JSON files (so that the new one comes in as zarjazz@1.6.0.json instead of zarjazz.json). And maybe we'd need a current.txt file to point to current but that would be easy to check, or maybe we could make the installer super duper smart enough to figure it out, or something.

Obviously there are ghastly compatibility implications for this.

Anyway throwing this out for consideration and discussion. (And doing it here because it's really about the Spin code, the plugins repo just follows what that dictates.)

[fibonacci1729]

+1; it's a small but annoying hassle to add new versions ATM. Your proposal of versioning all manifests and tracking latest (or intelligently deducing) makes sense to me!

[kate-goldenring]

One way this could work (and solve the compatibility issue would be) to have the latest duplicated in both zarjazz@1.6.0.json and zarjazz.json. Then, we can add CI to the plugins repo to automatically update the contents of zaejazz.json to always be the latest version of the plugin. Essentially, this could potentially be managed/aided with some automation in the plugins repo? Say i am updating the plugin to add zarjazz@1.6.0.json (prev version was zarjazz@1.5.0.json).

1. A maintainer of the plugins repo, creates a versioned json for each latest unversioned foo.json in each plugin directory
2. I create a PR to add zarjazz@1.6.0.json file to the plugin directory. Note, zarjazz@1.5.0.json and zarjazz.json are the same at this point.
3. A bot creates a commit to the PR to update zarjazz.json as well

[rajatjindal]

One way to do verification would be to have a CI process to validate the changes instead of manual verification.

Generally the changes to plugin repo are of two categories:

• a simple version bump
• some other changes (e.g. description change, or the download URL change etc)

For the first category of changes, a CI process can easily validate that

• the new zarjazz@1.6.0.json is same content as zarjazz.json@main
• the only diff between zarjazz.json@branch and zarjazz.json@main is the change in version numbers.

If both the above checks are OK, we automatically mark the PR as approved (or maybe just say it looks OK as a comment on the PR). As an extension we can auto-merge the PR as well. e.g. this is how kubectl plugins are released. (Disclaimer: I am the owner of krew-release-bot).

For the second category of changes, I think it will be rare to have "other" changes published to an existing manifest. I would even argue that maybe we should disallow that. (a published artifact should be immutable).

I had started implementing the code for first category of changes, but never finished it. If folks agree to this, I can try to get that polished out by next week and add that to our CI process.

[rajatjindal]

+1; it's a small but annoying hassle to add new versions ATM. Your proposal of versioning all manifests and tracking latest (or intelligently deducing) makes sense to me!

Hi @fibonacci1729 have you seen spin-plugin-releaser. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on if that can help address some of the pain points of the current release process.

[itowlson]

@rajatjindal I think I am misunderstanding your intent. The download URL almost always changes because most plugin URLs are GitHub releases. So the version is part of the URL. And the digest always changes because why would there be a new version if nothing had changed. So I'm not sure how we are ever in a "only the version number changes" situation - could you amplify?