[feature] : Config file versioning & custom error for out of date configs?

[SylviaWhittle]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Had a user email me to ask about an error that was caused by trying to run a slightly older config file. The error message was just a validation one from our config validator script, but it might be good to do an earlier check and print a pretty error message that for this specific case?

Describe the solution you would like.

Perhaps add a config file version numbering system and a check to ensure it's compatible when running topostats, and instead of the generic validation error, it could say:

"config file out of date, v2.1, needs v.24, please create a fresh config file and copy over your parameters"

or something?

Describe the alternatives you have considered.

No response

Additional context

No response

[ns-rse]

Could certainly do this going forward but don't think the default_config.yaml contains the TopoStats.__version__ at the moment. If doing so it would make sense to add the value from TopoStats.__version__ and check it against such a value (see examples in io.py that use

One possible solution would be to use something like the following prior to calling validation modules...

from importlib.metadata import version
from packaging.version import parse as parse_version

...
if parse_version(config["topostats_version"]) < parse_version(version("topostats"):
    ...

Or it might be possible to incorporate packaging.version / parse_version into the conditions of the VALIDATION_CONFIG.

Certainly adding a sentence to the output when validation fails to regenerate configuration files with the current version and tweak settings would be sensible.

[SylviaWhittle]

It could be a yaml field that is checked early on, or if not present, then assume it's prior to 2.4.x.

[ns-rse]

It would be easy to add that to the config when writing configuration files from runs, but that then introduces the need to add it when using the default_config.yaml and make sure that is done before validation is undertaken so that the version can always be validated.