[openstack-dev] [Heat] Conditionals, was: New function: first_nonnull

Zane Bitter zbitter at redhat.com
Tue Nov 11 21:06:17 UTC 2014


On 11/11/14 13:34, Ryan Brown wrote:
> I am strongly against allowing arbitrary Javascript functions for
> complexity reasons. It's already difficult enough to get meaningful
> errors when you **** up your YAML syntax.

Agreed, and FWIW literally everyone that Clint has pitched the JS idea 
to thought it was crazy ;)

I don't really like YAQL either though. It looks like line noise to me. 
 From the beginning we've tried to have the absolute minimum number of 
intrinsic functions in HOT. I would much prefer to resurrect the 
previous proposal for adding conditionals and then see what is still 
missing than to just dive straight in to embedding a whole other 
language in HOT.

> AIUI the functionality many users would look to use Javascript
> embed-ability for would be better served either by something like yaql,
> or by making vendored HOT functions possible.
>
> Vendored HOT would look something like "X-Vendor::YourNamespace" and
> functions could be managed similarly to resource plugins (stevedore).
> It's a very rough idea, but I like it much better than adding Javascript.

That already existed at one point. We ripped out the plugin part during 
Juno in favour of tying the intrinsic functions available to a template 
format, so that vendoring HOT with new intrinsic functions also requires 
(or at least suggests) changing the template format version string, to 
allow Heat can detect immediately when you are using an unsupported 
template format.

That said it still basically works, but the real issue is that it's 
under the control of the operator and not the template author.

cheers,
Zane.



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