Distributions, versioning, and migrations

[DamianReeves]

Distributions are a great and distinguishing feature in morphir. I might be missing something, but it seems that there is no version information in what is done.

Is that the case, or am I missing something?

I do feel versioning is really important for the distributions as a whole, but also for modules, types and functions. Tagging nodes with version info will help in tracking changes over time.

[AttilaMihaly]

Yes, there is no version information. The reason is simply that we haven't decided on a package management strategy yet so I wanted to avoid getting into versions until we get there. But I think you are right, we need to start thinking about it.

For the whole IR I was following the approach of keeping the identifiers separate from the actual value. For example type and value definitions don't have a name. The name is a level higher on the module level. The motivation to create a Distribution on top of Package was the same: Package does not have a name in it, the name of the Package is in the Distribution type.

Distribution is a weird structure though because it supposed to encapsulate multiple packages, each with a specific version but how those versions are managed would be up to the package management strategy we choose.

We could simply add a version number but I'm not sure how that would affect package management. Do you have any specific requirements? Maybe that would help to drive our thinking in the right direction.