Open Stack

On 9/5/12 4:23 PM, Kevin L. Mitchell wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-09-05 at 14:07 -0700, Joshua Harlow wrote:
>> It seems like its almost like a extension here is a bundle of code that
>> extends multiple parts no?
> That would be a good way of doing it.  However, it's not the way that's
> currently implemented in nova.  Right now, the only thing that can be
> extended by loading a plugin—in the context we're discussing—is the
> osapi itself.
I have added a plugin framework to Folsom which addresses many of the 
concerns in this thread.

http://wiki.openstack.org/novaplugin

There's an attempt on that page to clarify terminology so that we can 
distinguish between plugins, extensions, and drivers.  So far I haven't 
gotten much traction with that, though, and the three terms seem to be 
used interchangeably within OpenStack.

In my world, a plugin (as opposed to an Extension) is loaded via 
entrypoints (thus, does not need to be checked/merged into an OpenStack 
source tree), and provides several sets of hooks for injecting custom 
code into each service.  A plugin may or may not include extensions to 
an API.

My hope is that the plugin framework will become an umbrella for project 
extensibility, but there will need to be a fair bit of planning and 
discussion on this topic.  In the meantime... http://xkcd.com/927/