[tc] [ironic] Promoting ironic to a top-level opendev project?

Dmitry Tantsur dtantsur at redhat.com
Tue Apr 7 10:26:44 UTC 2020


Hi,

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 4:03 AM <Arkady.Kanevsky at dell.com> wrote:

> After reading this lengthy and enlightening threadI come back to Julia
> original points.
>
> 1. What are the benefits of having Ironic as part of OpenStack vs. having
> Ironic as part of opendev?
> a. I do not buy that people will use Ironic more as standalone. Biforst
> has been created several years back and was available as standalone Ironic.
> And it is not widely used.
>

It is widely used, just not among big names. Julia and I constantly
encounter people using it, as well as just installing ironic standalone
themselves or with kolla. And now metal3 is another standalone ironic use
case completely unrelated to openstack.


> b. Ironic is used as underpinning to other projects, like Metal3, Airship.
> And that is with Ironic being part of OpenStack. Can Ironic be improved for
> easier use outside OpenStack - absolutely? Having better handling of
> dependencies, like already mentioned Oslo and python will definitely help.
> c. Will Ironic be more adapted outside of OpenStack if it part opendev
> rather than OpenStack? Will be good to have some evidence for it.
>

I wish I could see the future :) I can only suggest that people who
currently have doubts about OpenStack-specific nature of Ironic would use
it. Maybe they wouldn't.


> 2. Does being part of OpenStack slows or impede Ironic growth and
> adoption? I would argue that being part of OpenDev will provide more
> opportunities for growth.
> 3. If Ironic becomes OpenDev project what changes?
>

As Jeremy rightly noted, I'm using "OpenDev" in a sense that I wish
existed, but doesn't exist currently. In the current reality it would be an
OSF project outside of the OpenStack umbrella.

And I do apologize for the confusion I caused.


> a. It will still be under the same governance, unless Ironic community
> want to create its own governances which will take velocity of developing
> new features. So expect that the current OpenStack governance rules will
> stay.
>

Please expand your question. The TC would no longer be in charge, the
PTL-core structure would probably stay in place.


> b. Will the gate and other processes change? Do not think so since the
> current ones work reasonably well.
>

Not much or not at all.


> c. Should Ironic be part of "integrated" openstack release and tested
> together with rest of openstack? - absolutely. It has a lot of benefit for
> a openstack community, including all derived distro products.
>

Should libvirt be part of the integrated OpenStack release? I think Nova's
integration with libvirt is more developed than one with Ironic. Still, I
keep hearing that the integration will fall apart if Ironic is no longer
under OpenStack. Why is that? Haven't we invented microversions
specifically to be able to further decouple service development?

That being said, there would be a certain level of release coordination.
There would be Ironic deliverables matching a coordinated OpenStack release
and supported accordingly.


> d. Will Ironic change its release cadence if it is no longer part of
> OpenStack proper? Ironic is only as good as its underlying drivers. That
> means that all drivers, that are currently outside of OpenStack governance
> will have to follow.
>

It's part of the idea, really. I don't see a problem from the driver's
perspective though. I thought the Dell team was actually interested in more
frequent releases to be able to deliver driver features more often?


> e. Will Ironic change the development platform? It currently use devstack.
>

We use devstack and bifrost, and we'll keep using them. We may reduce our
reliance on devstack in the CI, but, to be clear, it's part of our plans
irregardless of the outcome of this discussion.


> f. All Ironic documentation follows OpenStack and is part of it.
>

And this may be one of the perception problems we're seeing. Our standalone
documentation feels second-class, examples use Nova and OSC.


> 4. If Ironic leaves OpenStack proper what stops some of the other
> projects, like Cinder, or Keystone. to leave? That worries me. As it may
> lead to disintegration of the community and the notion of what OpenStack
> is. Or it may transition OpenStack to federated model of projects.
>

Maybe we may indeed? Maybe if we change OpenStack itself there won't be a
need for Ironic (Cinder, Keystone) to leave? It's a great question, thank
you for raising it!

Dmitry


>
> So after saying all of it, I am leaning toward cleaning up and simplifying
> dependencies to make it easier to consume Ironic outside OpenStack, at
> least for Victoria cycle and revisit it at that cycle end.
>
> Sorry for long stream of conscious.
> Arkady
>
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