Dead-ended Cylc conda packages

[hjoliver]

There are two cylc conda packages that we stopped publishing at older versions.

the "cylc" meta-package

We abandoned this after 8.0b1, so if a user (quite reasonably) types conda install cylc they will get ancient development releases of our components.

blargh $ conda search cylc
Loading channels: done
# Name                       Version           Build  Channel             
cylc                           8.0a1          py37_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a1  py37hc8dfbb8_1  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a1          py38_1  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py37hc8dfbb8_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py37hc8dfbb8_1  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py37hc8dfbb8_2  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py38h32f6830_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py38h32f6830_1  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0a2  py38h32f6830_2  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0b0  py37h89c1867_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0b0  py38h578d9bd_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0b1  py37h89c1867_0  conda-forge         
cylc                           8.0b1  py38h578d9bd_0  conda-forge 

cylc-ui

We stopped publishing this as a separate conda package after 8.0rc1. In the 23 May Cylc meeting, no one present could remember if this was a deliberate decision or not. We don't need it as a separate package (it is bundled with cylc-uiserver), but older versions were published so we should do something to indicate they should not be user.

blargh $ conda search cylc-ui
Loading channels: done
# Name                       Version           Build  Channel             
cylc-ui                          0.1               0  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                          0.1               1  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                          0.1               2  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                          0.2               0  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                          0.2               1  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                        0.3.0      ha770c72_0  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                        0.4.0      ha770c72_0  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                        0.5.0      ha770c72_0  conda-forge         
cylc-ui                        1.0.0      ha770c72_0  conda-forge  

[hjoliver]

questions

1. Do we want to keep the separate cylc-ui package up to date, or abandon it? (Presumably the latter)
2. What to do about the cylc meta-package, and cylc-ui if abandoning it?

Ideas for 2:

• Submit a conda-forge/admin-requests PR to get these removed as "broken packages"
• Upload a final version of each package that replaces all files with an explanatory README (if that will fly with conda-forge?)
• Something else?

[oliver-sanders]

Mentioned in #130, #130 (comment)

[hjoliver]

Conda Forge package versions labelled as broken are ignored by conda install.

Marking package versions as broken involves forking conda-forge/admin-requests and making a PR to add a broken/<blah>.txt file that lists the broken package versions.

For the old cylc meta package, we'd have to list all of these: https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/cylc/files

We could try this, but I'm not sure it would fly with the Conda Forge reviewers, because the packages are not technically broken.

Alternatively, or as well, we could post a new final version of the meta package that updates the description in the recipe and (if we can get away with it) replaces all the project files with an informative README file.

Let's make a decision in the next meeting, if not before.