Versioned import statements

[cjllanwarne]

NB this is not about WDL 1.0 vs draft-2 etc. It's about versioning of WDL files within a repo.

As I understand things, TRS repos (amongst others) will allow people to have multiple versions available for the same workflow and task and responsible WDL authors will presumably want to be able to choose which version to import (to avoid things changing underneath them when a new update is added, for example)

To support this - and to avoid having to work out a complex or repo-specific URL structure, I'd like to suggest we allow embedding the version to import into the import statement.

Maybe something like:

version ... # I'm NOT talking about THIS version :)

import "tools/published_tool" @ "v1.0"
import "tools/new_tool_version" @ "v11.3"
import "structs/alpha_struct_defs" @ "v0.5"

[jayrbolton]

Has there been any discussion around package management, dependency resolution, and registry hosting for WDLs?

This is very related to an import syntax, but I realize this is a big outward spiral, so feel free to move me elsewhere.

[geoffjentry]

@jayrbolton I haven't come across anything but agree. If you have thoughts I'd encourage you to bring up the topic on the mailing list. I'd normally suggest a PR but that doesn't seem to make sense here