Fix license finder version for previous releases in license management project

Problem to solve

In license management project we do releases like following

12-6-stable:
  extends: .release
  variables:
    DOTENV: ".env.12-6-stable"

In env files we can have options like default version for report format, python version

LM_PYTHON_VERSION 2.7
LM_REPORT_VERSION 1

License management uses license finder to detect licenses, project is in active development and its evolving. Currently we are using 5.6. Whenever we update license finder, new version will be used in between Gitlab 12.2 - 12.6 license management. New releases of license finder can introduce breaking changes and introduce backwards compatibility problems. In order to avoid breaking changes we should be able to fix license finder version for Gitlab versions. (i.e 12.2 will use license management which based on license finder 5.6.0)

Intended users

Further details

Proposal

Introduce new variable to .env files (LICENSE_FINDER_VERSION) in license management https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/license-management/tree/master which will fix license finder version.

  • Add the LICENSE_FINDER_VERSION to each .env.12-* file.
  • Add the LM_PYTHON_VERSION to each .env.12-* file.
  • Add any other missing environment variables that can change over time to the .env.12-* file.

Documentation

This needs to be communicated with customers

Testing

All integration projects QA are passing

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Developers could update license finder frequently without dealing with backwards compatibility issues.

p.s This issue is created for capturing a discussion, please feel free to edit.

Edited by Can Eldem