Specify "tier" for each extension

[lassoan]

By default, Tier 3 is assigned to all extensions - see list of exceptions (that assigned tier 1 or tier 5 instead) in the commit message.

Associated schema update: Slicer/Slicer#8066

Required for Slicer/Slicer#7474

[pieper]

Thanks for moving ahead with this. It should help us clear the RP backlog.

There are several json schemas that end with ## and I'm not sure if that's going to hurt anything, otherwise I think we should go ahead and make any adjustments later.

[lassoan]

Thanks for the review. I've fixed the double # typos.

Let's hear fom @jcfr about the tier for SlicerLookingGlass. I assumed that Kitware is maintaining it, but maybe LookingGlass did not provide funding for the maintenance.

[fedorov]

For the sake of completeness, can someone please link to the documentation that defines tiers and requirements?

[lassoan]

For the sake of completeness, can someone please link to the documentation that defines tiers and requirements?

The requirements are in this pull request, too: https://github.com/Slicer/ExtensionsIndex/pull/2123/files#diff-18813c86948efc57e661623d7ba48ff94325c9b5421ec9177f724922dd553a35

It is mostly about splitting up the existing extension submission checklist, requiring less for tier 1 and requiring all for tier 5 extensions.

[lassoan]

Thanks for all the feedback. I've answered all the comments and checks are passing, so if I don't get any more comments then I'll merge this in about 2 hours.

[lassoan]

@jamesobutler I think we should proceed merging this now, as is, and tweak it later.

We do not have any automated infrastructure for computing and enforcing recursive computation of tiers for dependencies. It would be hard to implement this for soft runtime dependencies. We could of course do the work manually but that would take away time from other, more impactful efforts. Since it is debatable if tiers should be applied recursively to dependent extensions at all, I would not introduce any rules for dependent extension tiers right now.

We could tweak the list of tier 5 extensions, but we don't need to do it now. Current tier 5 list is aspirational and we may remove some extensions from it as we are getting closer to cutting the new Slicer Stable Release (or we may adjust the list of tier 5 requirements).

We could delay the decision and discuss this further at developer meetings, but delaying this pull request would delay/complicate approval of several open pull requests and @jcfr's work on updating the extension catalog frontend.

[jamesobutler]

Current tier 5 list is aspirational

Ok. Yeah as it relates to the user experience having the tiers represent the state of the extensions that they currently are in rather than what we would hope them to be would be the most beneficial (SlicerLookingGlass being Tier1 although aspires to be Tier5). Ultimately the user will have a poor experience if a Tier 5 is non-functional as they will lose trust in the rankings. Life happens and developers can’t always provide maintenance to an extension due to not having enough time or resources to fund the effort. There will definitely be at times where something we really want to have be available say SlicerDMRI and UKFTractography as Tier 5, but there isn’t the resources associated with a Tier 5 extension to reflect it to users. I think most extension developers would aspire to be Tier 5 even though realistically they are unable to provide that Tier 5 experience to the users consistently.

We could alternatively set all Tier 5 to be Tier 3 and then reasses the rankings more closely in the future to not hold up Tier related PRs. There would be Tier 1 and Tier 3 extensions specified currently.

[lassoan]

We could alternatively set all Tier 5 to be Tier 3 and then reasses the rankings more closely in the future

We'll use the proposed list of Tier 5 extensions for the upcoming Slicer-5.8 release and any downgrading will happen as needed during the release process (if an extension has issues and we cannot fix it then it will be downgraded).

[jamesobutler]

@lassoan It appears that SlicerNeuropacs was not given a tier ranking in this PR. SlicerNeuropacs extension was added to the index prior to this PR being integrated. It is also pointing to 1.0.0 of the schema file.

ExtensionsIndex/SlicerNeuropacs.json

Lines 1 to 8 in bb178bf

	{
	"$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Slicer/Slicer/main/Schemas/slicer-extension-catalog-entry-schema-v1.0.0.json#",
	"build_dependencies": [],
	"build_subdirectory": ".",
	"category": "Diffusion",
	"scm_revision": "main",
	"scm_url": "https://github.com/neuropacs/SlicerNeuropacs"
	}