[ovs-dev] [RFC] [PATCH] 1/1 Add multi-column index support for the Python IDL

[Ben Pfaff]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 02:52:51PM -0300, Flavio Leitner wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 07:23:07PM +0200, Timothy Redaelli wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Apr 2018 15:20:54 -0700
> > Ben Pfaff <blp at ovn.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Apr 09, 2018 at 03:03:03PM -0500, twilson at redhat.com wrote:
> > > > From: Terry Wilson <twilson at redhat.com>
> > > > 
> > > > This adds multi-column index support for the Python IDL that is
> > > > similar to the feature in the C IDL.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Terry Wilson <twilson at redhat.com>  
> > > 
> > > Thanks for working on this.
> > > 
> > > I think that this adds a new Python module dependency on
> > > "sortedcontainers".  I didn't have it installed for python2 or
> > > python3--at least on Debian, it is not installed by default--so many
> > > tests failed.  I guess that we should at least document that, and
> > > probably it means that there should be new dependencies.
> > > 
> > > (When I installed the Python module, everything was fine.)
> > 
> > Hi,
> > unfortunately "python-sortedcontainers" packages are not available on
> > RHEL repositories.
> > 
> > This means, if this commit is approved, it will not be possible to build
> > OVS on RHEL anymore and, if we skip the tests, it will not be possible
> > to use the python OVS extensions.
> > 
> > so I suggest, if possible, to find and alternative to
> > "sortedcontainers".
> 
> Hi Terry,
> 
> Not trying to be the obstructionist here, but as you pointed out in
> the cover letter and Tim highlighted here, that dependency isn't
> packaged in neither RHEL (7 or 8) or EPEL, which means it breaks OVS
> backwards compatibility. I suspect others not-so-recent distros might
> have the same problem.  For instance, only F27 includes that IIRC.
> 
> Do you have a plan to address that issue?

We used to install some Python compatibility modules on some OSes.  See
commit e23812fc60af (Increase prerequisite from Python 2.4 to Python
2.7.) to see how we did it before (which was pretty simple).  The same
thing might work here.