Version-Specific Lab Topology Files

netlab offers two mechanisms you can use when working on projects that might be used in environments with unknown netlab versions:

  • Minimum netlab version required to run the lab topology.

  • Version-specific topology files

Minimum Netlab Version

You can specify minimum version required to run a lab topology in version attribute or in defaults.version attribute. The value of this attribute could be a simple version number (example: 1.6.4) or a Python version specifier (example: >= 1.6.3).

For example, this is how you can ensure that netlab generates a useful error message when a user tries to run a lab topology that uses bgp.policy plugin (introduced in release 1.6.4):

module: [ bgp ]
plugin: [ bgp.policy ]

version: 1.6.4

Warning

The version attribute was introduced in netlab release 1.6.3. Prior netlab versions will report an invalid attribute.

Version-Specific Topology Files

Starting with netlab 1.6.4, netlab tries to find a topology file that is a best match for the installed netlab version.

When given a lab topology name (example: topology.yml), netlab tries to find matching files that include a version number (example: topology.*.*.yml)[1].

For example, when a directory contains test.yml, test.1.5.yml, test.1.6.3.yml, test.1.6.yml, and test.1.8.yml, netlab uses the following topology when you execute netlab up test.yml

  • test.yml for releases prior to 1.6.4 (the version-specific topologies were introduced in 1.6.4)

  • test.1.6.3.yml in releases starting from 1.6.4 and up to 1.8

  • test.1.8.yml in releases starting from 1.8.0.

Tip

It’s highly recommended that you add version attribute to versioned topology files to ensure the user does not try to use a topology file not suitable for their netlab version

Using version-specific topology files can be confusing. To reduce the confusion, netlab prints a notice telling you which topology file it uses whenever it uses a version-specific topology file. You can also use the netlab inspect input command to display the topology file and all the default files netlab used to start the lab, for example:

$ netlab inspect input
- /home/user/BGP/policy/6-med/topology.1.6.4.yml
- /home/user/BGP/defaults.yml
- /home/user/.netlab.yml
- package:topology-defaults.yml