Conan packages of this library are often outdated

[Dobiasd]

Conan (as opposed to Conda) does not automatically fetch the latest version.

Pushing the latest version to Conan is a manual process (forking their repo, adjusting the files, creating a PR, and waiting, see example). I find it quite annoying.

So maybe it's time to drop support for Conan, i.e., remove it from the installation instructions, no longer publish new versions there, and open a removal PR in their repo.

[jcar87]

HI @Dobiasd - Luis from Conan Center here.
Thank you for your contribution in conan-io/conan-center-index#19953.

Please note that Conan Center is currently a joint effort between the Conan Team and contributors from the community. We are currently exploring more automated checks to publish new versions of libraries as they are released. Indeed Conda-forge has a bot for this: https://github.com/conda-forge/frugally-deep-feedstock/pull/4/files - although from what I can see it still requires human verification.

One of the reasons the reasons our verification process takes long is because it builds quite a large combination of OS/compiler/compiler versions - I believe this has been helpful in identifying and troubleshooting the issue here: conan-io/conan-center-index#19953 (comment)

We are considering more automated checks to create PRs in Conan Center to publish new versions - currently there are two concerns. Due to the number of configurations validated, this is too resource intensive if it was fully automated - so we need to engineer it in such a way that it does not disrupt or overload our service. The second issue is the fact that when binaries are published too quickly after a release, we have noticed quite a few times that library authors might re-tag a release (to point to a different commit), causing confusion. So we would also need a grace period.

However, one of our contributors kindly maintains this dashboard: https://qchateau.github.io/conan-center-bot/#/updatable - where if a library has a published new version that is not yet a Conan Center, you can click on "Open one" to open the pull request yourself without having to fork the repo or edit the files. Feel free to use this in the future.

no longer publish new versions there, and open a removal PR in their repo.

Please note that our current policy is to not delete things from the repository - we want to ensure our users have build reproducibility. Since Conan Center is community maintained, any user can contribute a new version to any library, should they wish to do so.

[Dobiasd]

Hi, and thanks a lot for taking the time to give such a nice and kind explanation of the state of affairs! ❤️

And you are right. Conan's extensive verification process did reveal a problem in frugally-deep. 🚀

The dashboard, you linked to, with the one-click-pull-request feature looks like an absolute game-changer for me! 😍 Knowing about this, I'll happily give it a try on my next release of FunctionalPlus or frugally-deep. 👍

[ericLemanissier]

FYI, you can also update a recipe's dependencies with another tool : https://ericlemanissier.github.io/conan-center-index-bump-deps/ (it uses https://github.com/conan-io/conan-extensions/tree/main/extensions/commands/recipe under the hood)

[Dobiasd]

@qchateau I just tried to add the new version of frugally-deep to Conan using https://qchateau.github.io/conan-center-bot/#/updatable

but creating the PR fails with Pull request creation failed. Validation failed: must be a collaborator.

Could you help me with that?

[Dobiasd]

@ericLemanissier I also looked into your tool https://ericlemanissier.github.io/conan-center-index-bump-deps/
but frugally-deep is not listed there. Do I first need to register it somewhere?

[ericLemanissier]

Because as far as I can see, all the dependencies of frugally-deep are already bumped to the latest version

[Dobiasd]

@ericLemanissier 💡 Ah, sorry, I had misunderstood the purpose of your tool. 😬 I thought it's an alternative to the one by qchateau. But now I understand, what it's actually for. Thanks a lot, things make sense to me now. 👍

Now, I hope there's a way to make qchateau's tool work for me.. 🙂

[ericLemanissier]

Yeah, the problem is tracked in qchateau/conan-center-bot#111

The nice thing with conan-center-bot is that you can fork qchateau's repo, and enable its github actions, and you will get your own web pages to do the bumps, which won't have the privileges problem because you will be the owner.
Alternatively, conan-center-bot is a command-line tool which you can install and run manually

[Dobiasd]

Oh, thanks for the explanation and alternative! ❤️

For now, I used the old way of creating the PR manually. ✅