Make Ice 3.4 the minimum supported version

[ghost]

• No Ice 3.3 references should remain
• Ice 3.4 is the minimum version
• Ice 3.5 is the recommended version
• Removed Ice 3.3-specific documentation and workarounds
• Updated link to point to the current Ice documentation

[snoopycrimecop]

Empty PR description. Please add a short summary of the PR scope and some testing instructions.

[mtbc]

The CI contributing docs still mention Ice 3.3 under the OMERO-5.1 jobs, that's probably okay while the jobs are still actually there.

In developer docs, Cpp.txt still mentions Ice 3.3 and Java.txt starts out by linking to docs from it (also see the figure link in Modules/ExceptionHandling.txt).

In the sysadmin docs, troubleshooting.txt still mentions /opt/Ice-3.3.1.

[mtbc]

remove the "JDK 6" at the end?

[ghost]

@mtbc The points you raised above should be fixed now, thanks.

[hflynn]

The config file seems to be pointing at Ice3.3 versions for the Jenkins jobs by default, as we established with the javadoc links in #749 but looking at it, I can't see how to change that:
# Variables used to define OMERO Jenkins extlinks if "JENKINS_JOB" in os.environ: jenkins_job = os.environ.get('JENKINS_JOB') else: jenkins_job = 'OMERO-trunk'

[ghost]

--rebased-to #763

[ghost]

@hflynn OMERO-trunk needs to refer to the ice35 build. @sbesson can we change this?

[hflynn]

The download page links seem to be Ice 3.4 by default, would that do? After all, we are still not going to support 3.5 for Windows are we?

[hflynn]

Ah, see your rebase comment about 3.5 now, I'll see if I can change the links on the download pages //cc @sbesson

[ghost]

@hflynn Yes, we definitely are! I spent the last two weeks getting Ice 3.5 working on windows, so in 5.0.2 we can default to it across the board.

[joshmoore]

@rleigh-dundee : I don't know if it will/can become the default for 5.0.2 but that is certainly the longer-term goal. As @sbesson has pointed out, the number of changes (download pages, etc) that need to be changed for something like that is quite large. Let's first get it working and go from there.

[sbesson]

@rleigh-dundee: as commented on #749 (comment), my immediate thought is that it is time to point at the downloads API instead of our CI infrastructure, especially for production documentation. This would additionally simplify the upcoming switch to Ice 3.5 as then deploying the Ice 3.5 generated API under the downloads page should allow the documentation to point at the correct Javadoc.

In terms of implementation, my (maybe trivial) thought would be teach redirects like
http://downloads.openmicroscopy.org/latest/omero5/api/slice2html/omero/grid/Table.html
to do the right thing? /cc @qidane
If that is possible, the we could simply modify the javadoc extlink to use http://downloads.openmicroscopy.org/latest/omero5/api as the root.

[ghost]

@sbesson Makes sense.

[qidane]

@sbesson The link above does seem to work ok. Was this the redirect change that I made for Helen yesterday?

[hflynn]

Yes @qidane, that's the one I got you to do.

[qidane]

It all blurs together by the end of the week...

[joshmoore]

Not really a must, but it seems more like you've removed all references to Ice 3.4 as well, which someone may want to use.

[ghost]

They may wish to, but should we be actively recommending it in our installation docs, or simply describing how to install with the latest version of everthing? This is something most users are unlikely to care about. This wasn't specific to Ice--I've rationalised much of the installation docs recently for Linux and Windows, to remove ambigious options (like: we described four different ways to install java, now there's two with one being recommended), and this is doing the same for Homebrew. This depends upon the focus of the installation docs: do we describe a clear simple way to install a working system with a few caveats where needed, or do we have it describe every possible variation even when the variants have limited value? The latter was making the documentation exceedingly confusing and ambigious; keeping it simple doesn't mean the other options aren't possible, just that by default we describe the recommended way.

[hflynn]

I see Josh's point here, we are still saying we support Ice 3.4, surely leaving in the two 'how to install Ice 3.4' caveats and path needed for Ice Python and dynamic libraries if you are using 3.4 isn't that confusing?

[ghost]

We support many versions of different things. That doesn't make them recommended or suitable for the default installation instructions. For example, we support Java 6 and Python 2.6. Both are long obsolete and unsupported, the currently supported versions being Java 7 and Python 2.7. Ice 3.4 is also in this category. The old versions are not something we can recommend; it is not in the interests of our end users to be running outdated, unsupported, insecure software.

Now that all Ice versions of client and server are completely inter-operable, there is no reason to recommend any version but the latest; it will be interoperable with all other Ice versions of the client and server. The fact that an end user could in theory choose to install the obsolete and unsupported Ice 3.4 does not make that a good choice, and I don't think bad choices should be mentioned in the instructions for new installs. When the choice is between a supported version and an obsolete version, it really isn't a choice we need to present to the end user at all. What needs are satisfied by having it in the docs?

[hflynn]

Ok, I guess this is aimed at new users and there probably isn't any sensible reason why they would want to install an out-of-date Ice version. @joshmoore are you happy for me to merge this?

[ghost]

What are the realistic potential scenarios where one would reasonably wish to choose ice 3.4 over 3.5?

[joshmoore]

There are still users who "choose" to use Ice 3.3 with 4.4, and we'll support those the best we can.

[hflynn]

The 4.4 docs have not been changed though, so sysadmins installing 4.4 will still have the instructions for Ice 3.3 and 3.4.

[ghost]

Exactly. These are the installation instructions for 5.1.

[joshmoore]

Agreed, and as long as the decision is for Ice 3.4 to be supported on 5.1 (which it currently is), it should get the same treatment as Ice 3.3 on OMERO 4.4.

[joshmoore]

Barring the fact that I would have left instructions on installing ice 3.4 with homebrew, all makes sense.

[hflynn]

N.B. http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/omero5/sysadmins/limitations.html#ice-3-5 has not been removed by this PR but I suggest it is removed on the dev_5_0 branch when we confirm support in our current major release version, and then rebase that fix.