"pub global activate" should more flexibly choose a package version to activate

[sethladd]

sethladd:~$ pub --version
Pub 1.6.0-dev.4.0

sethladd:~$ pub global activate polymer
Downloading polymer 0.12.0+1...
Resolving dependencies...
Incompatible version constraints on barback:

• polymer 0.12.0+1 depends on version >=0.14.2 <0.15.0
• pub itself depends on version >=0.13.0 <0.14.2

use case: just trying to install polymer so I can test building the docs.

[sethladd]

Looks like this is also blocking our docs build: https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=20285

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cc @sigmundch.

[sethladd]

Issue #20285 has been merged into this issue.

[sigmundch]

cc @nex3.

[sigmundch]

Just spoke with Natalie - I think you can do pub global active polymer 0.12.0 and it should work for you.

Starting with polymer 0.12.0+1 we need barback 0.14.2, which will be supported by the next dev channel release of pub

[nex3]

I'm re-targeting this to be a feature request for "pub global activate" doing some version resolution on the package in question.

The reason this is failing for you is, as Siggi mentioned, that Polymer 0.12.0+1 depends on barback 0.14.2, which is incompatible with pub 1.6.0-dev.4.0. That said, "pub global activate" should probably be smart enough to realize that Polymer 0.12.0 doesn't have this dependency, and install that instead.

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cc @munificent.
Removed Type-Defect, Area-Pkg, Pkg-Polymer labels.
Added Type-Enhancement, Area-Pub labels.
Changed the title to: ""pub global activate" should more flexibly choose a package version to activate".

[sethladd]

Thanks for the analysis!

The 'pub global activate' thing is part of the issue, for sure.

Did you happen to also take a look at https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=20285 ? The dartdoc build for this polymer package broke, and it reported the same kind of barback version issue.

[munificent]

Issue #20285 has been merged into this issue.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by kurotensh...@autistici.org

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Arg this damned Barback !!!!

It's not the first time I have this reflective dependency error !

Why can't we override dependencies of "pub itself" to be able to use packages that trigger this error ? Polymer is not the only one in this case.

[nex3]

Why can't we override dependencies of "pub itself" to be able to use packages that trigger this error ? Polymer is not the only one in this case.

Pub's dependency on barback isn't spurious; it really does only work with that range of barback versions. If you were to override the dependency, "pub serve", "pub build", and "pub run" would break in confusing and painful ways.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by kurotensh...@autistici.org

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So, why publish a 0.12.0+7 version of polymer in pub if it's impossible to use it ?

[nex3]

So, why publish a 0.12.0+7 version of polymer in pub if it's impossible to use it ?

The short answer is that it will be possible to use it eventually.

The long answer has to do with how we develop packages in the Dart repo. Due to the way our test infrastructure is set up, each package in the repo need to be compatible with the latest version of each other package. This means that in order to fully extract the source_span package from the source_maps package, we needed to make each other package that uses its functionality—including Polymer—use the latest version of barback in order to use its source_span functionality.

In addition, we have a policy of immediately releasing any version of a package that just increments its build identifier, so this new Polymer version was released.

[sethladd]

Immediately releasing a polymer pkg that doesn't work with a published dev channel of the SDK means we can't build the docs for it :( That's what https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=20285 was all about.

[nex3]

Set owner to @nex3.
Added Started label.

[nex3]

Fixed in r39429.

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Added Fixed label.

[DartBot]

This issue has been moved to dart-lang/pub#1074.