<div dir="ltr">This is a very important discussion - very closely related to the one going on in this other thread <a href="http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-September/045768.html">http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-September/045768.html</a>.<div>Unfortunately it is also a discussion that tends to easily fragment and move in a thousand different directions.</div><div>A few months ago I was too of the opinion that vendor plugins and drivers were the main reason of unnecessary load for the core team. I still think that they're an unnecessary heavy load, but I reckon the problem does not really lies with open source versus vendor code. It lies in matching people's competencies with subsystems and proper interface across them - as already pointed out in this thread.</div><div><br></div><div>I have some more comments inline, but unless growing another monster thread I'd rather start a different, cross-project discussion (which will hopefully not become just a cross-project monster thread!)</div><div><br></div><div>Salvatore<br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 15 September 2014 08:29, Germy Lure <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:germy.lure@gmail.com" target="_blank">germy.lure@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><font color="#0b5394">Obviously, to a vendor's plugin/driver, the most important thing is API.Yes?</font><div><font color="#0b5394">NB API for a monolithic plugin or a service plugin and SB API for a service driver or agent, even MD. That's the basic.</font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">Now we have released a set of NB APIs with relative stability. The SB APIs' standardization are needed.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The internal interface between the API and the plugins is standardized at the moment through use of classes like [1]. A similar interface exists for ML2 drivers [2].</div><div>At the moment the dispatch of an API call to the plugin or from a plugin to a ML2 driver is purely a local call so these interfaces are working fairly well at the moment. I don't know yet however whether they will be sufficient in case plugins are split into different repos. ML2 Driver maintainers have however been warned in the past that the driver interface is to be considered internal and can be changed at any time. This does not apply to the plugin interface which has been conceived in this way to facilitate the development of out of tree plugins.</div><div><br></div><div>On the other hand, if by SB interfaces you are referring to the RPC interfaces for communicating between the servers and the various plugin, I would say that they should be considered internal at the moment.</div><div><br></div><div>[1] <a href="https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/neutron_plugin_base_v2.py#L28">https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/neutron_plugin_base_v2.py#L28</a><br></div><div>[2] <a href="https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/plugins/ml2/driver_api.py">https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/plugins/ml2/driver_api.py</a></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><font color="#0b5394"><br></font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">Some comments inline.</font></div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="">On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Kevin Benton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blak111@gmail.com" target="_blank">blak111@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span><div>> So my suggestion is remove all vendors' plugins and drivers except opensource as built-in.</div><div><br></div></span><div>Yes, I think this is currently the view held by the PTL (Kyle) and some of the other cores so what you're suggesting will definitely come up at the summit. </div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#0b5394">Good! </font></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The discussion however will not be that different from the one we're seeing on that huge thread on splitting out drivers, which has become in my opinion a frankenthread.</div><div>Nevertheless, that thread points out that this is far from being merely a neutron topic (despite neutron being the project with the highest number of drivers and plugins). </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span><div><br></div><div><br>> Why do we need a different repo to store vendors' codes? That's not the community business.</div><div>> I think only a proper architecture and normal NB&SB API can bring "a clear separation between plugins(or drivers) and core code", not a different repo.</div><div><br></div></span><div>The problem is that that architecture won't stay stable if there is no shared community plugin depending on its stability. Let me ask you the inverse question. Why do you think the reference driver should stay in the core repo? </div><div><br></div><div>A separate repo won't have an impact on what is packaged and released so it should have no impact on "user experience", "complete versions", "providing code examples", or "developing new features". In fact, it will likely help with the last two because it will provide a clear delineation between what a plugin is responsible for vs. what the core API is responsible for. And, because new cores can be added faster to the open source plugins repo due to a smaller code base to learn, it will help with developing new features by reducing reviewer load.</div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#0b5394">OK, the key point is that vendors' code should be kept by themselves NOT by the community. But in the same time, the community should provide</font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">some open source reference as standard examples for those new cores and vendors. </font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">U are right, "A separate repo won't have an impact on what is packaged and released". The open source can stays in the core repo or a different one. </font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">In any case, we need them there for referencing and version releasing.</font></div><div><font color="#0b5394">Any vendor would not maintain the open source codes, the community only.</font></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think that we are probably focusing too much on the "separate repo" issue, which is probably being seen as punitive for drivers and plugins.</div><div>The separate repo would be just a possible tool for achieving the goal of reducing the review load imposed by drivers on the core team while keeping them part of the integrated release.</div><div><br></div><div>Regarding the "open source reference" solution... first there's no such thing like this. The fact that the upstream gate tests ML2 + OVS mech driver implicitly seem to make this the "reference", but this has not been sanctioned anywhere; second, the Neutron source tree does not just have a "reference plugin". It also has the DHCP agent, the OVS agent, the L3 agent, which implement also the management plane of a network virtualization system which uses OVS, iptables and other tools as its datapath. This is just for saying that when we talk about "splitting stuff from the main repo" there is more than just vendor plugin and drivers. It's more about giving control of subsystems to the people which are truly experts of that subsystem. I don't know whether splitting repositories would be the way to go.</div><div><br></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 1:50 AM, Germy Lure <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:germy.lure@gmail.com" target="_blank">germy.lure@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span>On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Kevin Benton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blak111@gmail.com" target="_blank">blak111@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span><br>> Maybe I missed something, but what's the solution?</span><div><br><div>There isn't one yet. That's why it's going to be discussed at the summit.</div></div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">So my suggestion is remove all vendors' plugins and drivers except opensource as built-in. </font></div><div><font color="#38761d">By leaving open source plugins and drivers in the tree , we can resolve such problems:</font></div><div><font color="#38761d"> 1)release a workable and COMPLETE version</font></div><div><font color="#38761d"> 2)user experience(especially for beginners)</font></div><div><font color="#38761d"> 3)provide code example to learn for new contributors and vendors</font></div><div><font color="#38761d"> 4)develop and verify new features</font></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><span><br><div><br></div><div>> I think we should release a workable version.</div><div><br></div></span><div>Definitely. But that doesn't have anything to do with it living in the same repository. By putting it in a different repo, it provides smaller code bases to learn for new contributors wanting to become a core developer in addition to a clear separation between plugins and core code.</div></div></div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">Why do we need a different repo to store vendors' codes? That's not the community business.</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">I think only a proper architecture and normal NB&SB API can bring "a clear separation between plugins(or drivers) and core code", not a different repo.</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">Of course, if the community provides a wiki page for vendors to add hyperlink of their codes, I think it's perfect.</font></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><span><div><br></div><div>> Besides of user experience, the open source drivers are also used for developing and verifying new features, even small-scale case.</div></span></div></div><div><br></div><div>Sure, but this also isn't affected by the code being in a separate repo. </div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">See comments above. </font></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span><div><br></div><div>> The community should and just need focus on the Neutron core and provide framework for vendors' devices.</div><div><br></div></span><div>I agree, but without the open source drivers being separated as well, it's very difficult for the framework for external drivers to be stable enough to be useful.</div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">Architecture and API. The community should ensure core and API stable enough and high quality. Vendors for external drivers.</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">Who provides, who maintains(including development, storage, distribution, quality, etc).</font></div><div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Germy Lure <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:germy.lure@gmail.com" target="_blank">germy.lure@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><font color="#38761d">Some comments inline.</font><div><font color="#38761d"><br></font><div><div><font color="#38761d">BR,</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">Germy</font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span>On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Kevin Benton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blak111@gmail.com" target="_blank">blak111@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">This has been brought up several times already and I believe is going to be discussed at the Kilo summit. </div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">Maybe I missed something, but what's the solution?</font></div><span><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div></div><div>I agree that reviewing third party patches eats community time. However, claiming that the community pays 46% of it's energy to maintain vendor-specific code doesn't make any sense. LOC in the repo has very little to do with ongoing required maintenance. Assuming the APIs for the plugins stay consistent, there should be few 'maintenance' changes required to a plugin once it's in the tree. If there are that many changes to plugins just to keep them operational, that means Neutron is far too unstable to support drivers living outside of the tree anyway. </div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">Yes, you are right. "Neutron is far too unstable to support drivers living outside of the tree anyway". So I think this is really our important point.</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">The community should focus on </font><span style="color:rgb(56,118,29)">standardizing NB&SB API, introducing and improving new features NOT wasting energy to introduce and maintain vendor-specific codes.</span></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>On a related note, if we are going to pull plugins/drivers out of Neutron, I think all of them should be removed, including the OVS and LinuxBridge ones. There is no reason for them to be there if Neutron has stable enough internal APIs to eject the 3rd party plugins from the repo. They should be able to live in a separate neutron-opensource-drivers repo or something along those lines. This will free up significant amounts of developer/reviewer cycles for neutron to work on the API refactor, task based workflows, performance improvements for the DB operations, etc.</div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">I think we should release a workable version. User can experience the functions powered by built-in components. And they can replace them with</font></div><div><font color="#38761d">the release of those vendors who cooperate with them. The community should not work for vendor's codes.</font></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>If the open source drivers stay in the tree and the others are removed, there is little incentive to keep the internal APIs stable and 3rd party drivers sitting outside of the tree will break on every refactor or data structure change. If that's the way we want to treat external driver developers, let's be explicit about it and just post warnings that 3rd party drivers can break at any point and that the onus is on the external developers to learn what changed an react to it. At some point they will stop bothering with Neutron completely in their deployments and mimic its public API.</div></div></blockquote></span><div><font color="#38761d">Besides of user experience, the open source drivers are also used for developing and verifying new features, even small-scale case.</font></div><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>A clear separation of the open source drivers/plugins and core Neutron would give a much better model for 3rd party driver developers to follow and would enforce a stable internal API in the Neutron core.</div></div></blockquote></span><div><span style="color:rgb(56,118,29)">The community should and just need focus on the Neutron core and provide framework for vendors' devices</span><font color="#38761d">. Vendors just need adapt Neutron API and focus on their codes' quality. If not, I think the architecture is not proper. Everyone should only carry their own monkey.</font></div><div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div>On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:54 AM, Germy Lure <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:germy.lure@gmail.com" target="_blank">germy.lure@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div><div dir="ltr">Hi stackers,<div><br></div><div>According to my statistics(J2), the LOC of vendors' plugin and driver is about 102K, while the whole under neutron is 220K.</div><div>That is to say the community has paid and is paying over 46% energy to maintain vendors' code. If we take mails, bugs,</div><div>BPs and so on into consideration, this percentage will be more.</div><div><div><br></div><div>Most of these codes are just plugins and drivers implementing almost the same functions. Every vendor submits a plugin,</div><div>and the community only do the same thing, repeat and repeat. Meaningless.I think it's time to move them out. </div><div>Let's focus on improving those exist but still weak features, on introducing important and interesting new features.</div><div><br></div></div><div>My suggestions now:</div><div>1.monopolized plugins</div><div> 1)The community only standards NB API and keeps built-ins, such as ML2, OVS and Linux bridge plugins.</div><div> 2)Vendors maintain their plugins locally.</div><div> 3)Users get neutron from community and plugin from some vendor on demand.</div><div>2.service plugins</div><div> 1)The community standards SB API and keeps open source driver(iptables, openSwan and etc.) as built-in.</div><div> 2)Vendors only provide drivers not plugin. And those drivers also need not deliver to community.</div><div> 3)Like above, Users can get code on demand from vendors or just use open source.</div><div>3.ML2 plugin</div><div> 1)Like service and monopolized plugin, the community just keep open source implementations as built-in.</div><div> 2)L2-population should be kept.</div><div><br></div><div>I am very happy to discuss this further.</div><div><br></div><div>vendors' code stat. table(excluding built-in plugins and drivers)</div><div>------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><div>Path<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> Size</div><div>neutron-master\neutron\plugins\<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> 63170</div><div>neutron-master\neutron\services\<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> 4052</div><div>neutron-master\neutron\tests\<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span> 35756</div></div><div><br></div><div>BR,</div><div>Germy</div></div>
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