Open Stack

On 11/15/2013 12:01 PM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-11-15 at 11:28 -0500, Russell Bryant wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> We've talked a lot about requirements for new compute drivers [1].  I
>> think the same sort of standards shold be applied for a new third-party
>> API, such as the GCE API [2].
>>
>> Before we can consider taking on a new API, it should have full test
>> suite coverage.  Ideally this would be extensions to tempest.  It should
>> also be set up to run on every Nova patch via CI.
>>
>> Beyond that point, now is a good time to re-consider how we want to
>> support new third-party APIs.  Just because EC2 is in the tree doesn't
>> mean that has to be how we support them going forward.  Should new APIs
>> go into their own repositories?
>>
>> I used to be against this idea.  However, as Nova's has grown, the
>> importance of finding the right spots to split is even higher.  My
>> objection was primarily based on assuming we'd have to make the Python
>> APIs stable.  I still do not think we should make them stable, but I
>> don't think that's a huge issue, since it should be mitigated by running
>> CI so the API maintainers quickly get notified when updates are necessary.
>>
>> Taking on a whole new API seems like an even bigger deal than accepting
>> a new compute driver, so it's an important question.
>>
>> If we went this route, I would encourage new third-party APIs to build
>> themselves up in a stackforge repo.  Once it's far enough along, we
>> could then evaluate officially bringing it in as an official sub-project
>> of the OpenStack Compute program.
> 
> I do think there should be a high bar for new APIs. More than just CI,
> but that there is a viable group of contributors around the API who are
> involved in OpenStack more generally than just maintaining the API in
> question.
> 
> I don't at all like the idea of drivers or APIs living in separate repos
> and building on unstable Nova APIs. Anything which we accept is a part
> of OpenStack should not get randomly made unusable by one contributor
> while other contributors constantly have to scramble to catch up. Either
> stuff winds up being broken too often or we stifle progress in Nova
> because we're afraid to make breaking changes.
> 
> I happened to meet Thijs Metsch, the maintainer of OCCI for Nova
> yesterday:
> 
>   https://github.com/tmetsch/occi-os
>   https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Occi
> 
> and he described how often he had to fix the API implementation to adapt
> to changes in Nova's API. My advice was to work towards having the API
> be included in Nova (understand that it's a long road and there would be
> a bunch of difficult requirements) or take the less technically
> attractive option of proxying the OCCI API to the stable OpenStack REST
> API.
> 
> For someone like Thijs, choosing a middle road where the API
> implementation is going to be constantly broken is going to suck for him
> and his users.

Thanks for the comments.  Very interesting ...

A significantly high bar such that having it in the tree isn't a drain
on nova development (significant commitment by the maintainers, as well
as solid test coverage) makes sense.

Would we consider ripping it out if contribution goes down, or testing
doesn't keep up?  If so, do we apply the same standards to the EC2 API?
 How much time do we give EC2 to get up to this standard before we rip
it out?

-- 
Russell Bryant