Open Stack

On 8 April 2013 10:10, Steve Baker <sbaker at redhat.com> wrote:
> On 04/05/2013 11:54 PM, Thomas Spatzier wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> there have been several discussions around support for an "open format" in
>> Heat recently. For example, some were triggered by Rackspace's recent
>> announcement (there has been a long thread on the mailing list, where this
>> was one of the topics).
>>
>> We recently also posted a BP proposal to consider OASIS TOSCA as an option
>> for that "open format", and there has been some discussion on that BP.
>> Clint Byrum suggested we take this discussion to the mailing list, which is
>> the better place for it, so here we are.
>>
>> Here is a link to the BP:
>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/heat/+spec/tosca-support
>>
>> Would be interesting to get some discussion going, and maybe also get the
>> right folks together for some discussion at the upcoming summit.
> In the blueprint Zane suggested creating a standalone tool to translate
> TOSCA to a Heat template.  This seems like an ideal way of starting this
> effort for the following reasons:
> - The approach can be validated with extensive self-contained unit tests
> - It will reveal the features that need to be added to Heat
> - As Zane said, Cloudformation support for free
> - When it is possible, the same code can be extended to be a pluggable
> parser that runs on the server

>From a technical sense, I think pluggable components makes sense, but
there is I think a risk of over-fragmentation to, too balance out.

I'd like to know that there is a good, simple, open format in the core
[whether its a pluggable interface implementation or not], and for us
as a community to be developing stacks in it.

Having a TOSCA -> heat compiler seems like a great idea to let TOSCA
folk in to the party, but it seems awfully complex, the bits I've read
about :) - surely we can do something clean and minimal ?

-Rob
-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Cloud Services