Open Stack

On 24 April 2015 at 04:14, Chris Dent <chdent at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> This might be a bit presumptuous, but why not give it a try...

Nothing presumptuous about it at all :)

> There are many different ways to define "quality". For the sake of
> this question feel free to use whatever definition you like but take
> it as given that "quality" needs to be improved.
>
> Here's the question:
>
> What can and should the TC at large, and you specifically, do to ensure
> quality improves for the developers, end-users and operators of
> OpenStack as a full system, both as a project being developed and a
> product being used?

We've got a strong culture around many key elements of a high quality
product: backwards compatibility around APIs, testing, asking our
users and operators what their needs and pain points are.

The balkanisation of OpenStack is a big concern for me though,
particularly as it relates to usability. I'd like to see more
cross-project collaboration around OpenStack as a product (vs N
'small' products) - and the TC can encourage that (even with the big
tent model). Since we're an open source project, this has to be done
in an inclusive opt-in fashion, not dictatorial, so my first approach
here would be discussion and setting up a wg on it. The existing API
working group for instance is one method aiming to provide
consistency, but we've also got to look at differences like the tasks
vs not-tasks approach different servers take, and where things like
e.g. Zaqar are/aren't usable.

Right now development is pretty hard on lots of OpenStack, and this
holds us back - I referred to this in my TC candidacy email, and I
believe sorting this out is a pre-requisite for improving the
developer experience - but also for enabling improvements in quality
for users. Some key things have improved in the last 6 months like
review latency - but we can do more there. We need to make the gate be
more reliable, isolating it from unintentional external failures, and
reducing flakiness in OpenStack itself. I'm working on that now,
working on improvements to pip to enable much better robustness in our
gate.

-Rob

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