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Currently in Nova we're discussion adding a "capabilities" API to expose
to users what actions they're allowed to take, and having compute hosts
expose "capabilities" for use by the scheduler. As much fun as it would
be to have the same term mean two very different things in Nova to
retain some semblance of sanity let's rename one or both of these
concepts.

An API "capability" is going to be an action, or URL, that a user is
allowed to use. So "boot an instance" or "resize this instance" are
capabilities from the API point of view. Whether or not a user has this
capability will be determined by looking at policy rules in place and
the capabilities of the host the instance is on. For instance an
upcoming volume multiattach feature may or may not be allowed for an
instance depending on host support and the version of nova-compute code
running on that host.

A host "capability" is a description of the hardware or software on the
host that determines whether or not that host can fulfill the needs of
an instance looking for a home. So SSD or x86 could be host
capabilities.
https://github.com/jaypipes/os-capabilities/blob/master/os_capabilities/const.py
has a list of some examples.

Some possible replacement terms that have been thrown out in discussions
are features, policies(already used), grants, faculties. But none of
those seemed to clearly fit one concept or the other, except policies.

Any thoughts on this hard problem?