https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=39174
Bug ID: 39174
Summary: Search::Elasticsearch is end of life and will at some
point not be compatible anymore with future versions
Change sponsored?: ---
Product: Koha
Version: Main
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: NEW
Severity: normal
Priority: P5 - low
Component: Searching - Elasticsearch
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
QA Contact: [email protected]
tl;dr if someone curious has the time to check if the ES 9 beta works with
Search::Elasticsearch , it will help to know if we should immediately worry
about Search::Elasticsearch being EOL. If it's not compatible, things will
might be a bit tough.
(slightly less tl;dr, jump to "Conclusion")
Announced here mid 2022
https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-perl/issues/220
It got mentioned in Bug 33353 but the issue might have been too distant at the
time.
And we didn't have any ES 9 preview to works with nor LTS Koha versions to
account for.
We now have the 1st preview of 9.X, a beta:
https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/tags
If things didn't change much in their workflows, that would mean around half a
year before the 9.x release and EOL of 7.x:
https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-8-release-date/202759/2
We might think there is still a lot of time before v10 release and v8 EOL.
Which is the moment when we would have an issue. Since we have v8 support it's
okay.
But just with regular Koha versions and even more with LTS, it's important to
know if to support v9 it would break v7 compatibility. Because such a major
change is not great to do in the life of a Koha release. Like ES 8 support
couldn't be backported because it broke ES 6 support. Even if it was EOL, that
was an issue.
If waiting mid cycle of ES 9, and if Search::Elasticsearch isn't compatible
with it. It might be too late to fork it and fix stuff in Koha. Or find another
way to communicate with ES (and change even more stuff in Koha which would
definitely not be backportable regardless of ES 7 support).
By the time it's ready (past ES compat work took time while being simpler), the
LTS and maybe also the latest Koha release at the time might be still stuck
with official Search::Elasticsearch. And during their lifecycles, ES might be
out of date.
ES release dates:
ES 6: 2017-11
ES 7: 2019-04
ES 8: 2022-02
ES 9: ~2025-10 likely
It really depends on how long the time will be between ES 9 and ES 10.
We might not have to worry about regular Koha releases unless ES are quick. But
if in November 2026 (which is not that far when looking at Bug 25439 for ES 7
in 2020-05. It came into fruition for 22.11 with bug 25669), so if by then we
don't support ES 9 (if ES 9 won't work with the current lib), then 26.11 LTS
might be stuck with EOL ES 8 before it's own EOL in 2030-05. Which would be for
**more than half it's life** if ES 10 comes out in mid 2028 which would be a
2.5 year dev cycle which isn't crazy when looking at the history. Hopefully it
keeps getting longer as ES is mature. But no way ES 10 comes as late as 2030.
Missing ES 9 support for Koha 26.11 is sure to lead to the issue of having to
backport it during it's life which might be problematic if the changes are too
big.
Conclusion:
So despite things seemingly being very far away, with the ES 9 beta now, there
is a broom wagon[1] that has started to slowly makes it's way forward.
- And with not really pessimistic delay for us to get ES 9 support (which might
be especially tough this time)
- Our LTS timeline
- A not really pessimistic delay between ES 9 and ES 10
We can already foresee that broom wagon catching us before the finish line (the
full cycle of Koha 26.11 LTS)
(Such dependency management is really Sisyphus cycling and having to stop if
not finishing soon enough. And then having to wait for the broom wagon for way
longer than they were pedaling! 🙃 Over and over, wondering if they will make it
each time. Did I miss something? Is this really our fate? 🤣)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broom_wagon
Or with another analogy, it's early morning, we are hiking and turns out we can
already foresee the sun going down before we reach our destination.
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