Task #8740
Updated by pulpbot almost 3 years ago
**Ticket moved to GitHub**: "pulp/pulpcore/1993":https://github.com/pulp/pulpcore/issues/1993 ---- ## Problems 1. Currently, when auto-publish creates a publication, for distributions to go live with that the code needs to make a data change on the distribution. Here is [an example](https://github.com/pulp/pulp_rpm/blob/master/pulp_rpm/app/models/repository.py#L291-L296) in pulp_rpm. This requires the sync+publish code to lock on every distribution referencing the repository being sync'd. So instead of a lock like `["repository foo"]` you get `["repository foo", "some distribution" "another distribution", "maybe a third distribution"]`. 2. Using both fields doesn't capture the user's intent. If a user wants to have a distribution always publish the latest publication setting the `distribution.repository` captures that nicely. If a user wants to have a distribution distribute a specific version of a publication (even if newer ones get created) setting `distribution.publication` captures that nicely. What we've got though is both fields being used together which captures conflicting requirements, they want the latest publication for a repository, but they also want this specific publication? If the `distribution.publication` is poiting to the latest publication then we're using two pieces of data when we only need one. ## Why did we do it this way? I suspect because it was convenient since the content app already knows how to serve distribution.publication so by setting that data the publication will serve correctly. ## What to do instead? 1. For plugins that use publications, have their `Distribution` serializers validate to not allow both `repository` and `publication` at the same time. 2. Provide a migration to fix the data in cases where both are used. 3. Update the content app to find the latest publication when `MyDistribution.repository` is set and `MyDistribution.publication` is unset. This would happen [here](https://github.com/pulp/pulpcore/blob/master/pulpcore/content/handler.py#L370-L384). This is roughly how the content app auto distributes non-publication plugins, see the implementation [here](https://github.com/pulp/pulpcore/blob/master/pulpcore/content/handler.py#L422-L427).
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