Open Stack

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Otto <adrian.otto at rackspace.com>
Reply: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Date: April 19, 2016 at 19:11:07
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Subject:  Re: [openstack-dev] [magnum][app-catalog][all] Build unified	abstraction for all COEs

> This pursuit is a trap. Magnum should focus on making native container APIs available.  
> We should not wrap APIs with leaky abstractions. The lowest common denominator of all  
> COEs is an remarkably low value API that adds considerable complexity to Magnum that  
> will not strategically advance OpenStack. If we instead focus our effort on making the  
> COEs work better on OpenStack, that would be a winning strategy. Support and compliment  
> our various COE ecosystems.

I'm not nearly as familiar with each COE's API as I'm sure some of you are, but knowing the present quality of Magnum's documentation, the fact that it's API is not being documented well, and how thinly stretched most of Magnum's developers already seem to be, I think that not doing this now (or in the near term is a better option). First, all of the COEs magnum supports have excellent documentation around their API and clients. Magnum does not have that at present and would need to work on that for this effort to be worthwhile to Magnum's users. Second of all, what little I do know about each COE's API reinforces (in my opinion) what Adrian has stated above. Finally, it seems like there are too many focuses for development at the moment (between trying to improve gating to allow for multiple supported distributions by default, eliminating the hard reliance on barbican, creating a versioned and stable API, and other efforts) for the API design to be done well and documented well. Frankly, I think the magnum team should be focusing on 1 thing as their top priority right now and have a secondary priority. What those priorities are, is up to the community, but I don't think this should be one of those priorities as someone watching the community to evaluate it's direction and the potential future of Magnum inside a product.

--  
Ian Cordasco