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On 07/27/2015 04:35 PM, Jim Rollenhagen wrote:
> Hi friends.
> 
> Ironic implemented API "micro" versions in Kilo. We originally did this
> to allow for breaking changes in the API while allowing users to opt in
> to the breakage.
> 
> Since then, we've had a "default version" for our client that we bump to
> something sensible with each release. Currently it is at 1.8.
> Negotiation is done with the server to figure out what is supported and
> adjust accordingly.
> 
> Now we've landed a patch[0] with a new version (1.11) that is not
> backward compatible. It causes newly added Node objects to begin life in
> the ENROLL state, rather than AVAILABLE. This is a good thing, and
> people should want this! However, it is a breaking change. Automation
> that adds nodes to Ironic will need to do different things after the
> node-create call.
> 
> Our API versioning scheme makes this opt-in (by specifying the API
> version). However, some folks have a problem with releasing this change
> as-is. The logic is that we might release a client that defaults to 1.11
> or higher, or the user may request 1.12 later to get a new feature, thus
> breaking their application that enrolls nodes.
> 
> This is clearly backwards. Users should read release notes and be aware
> of what changes between versions in the API. Users need to be aware of
> the fact that our API is versioned, and use that to their advantage.
> 
> It seems to me that the goal of the version negotiation in our client
> has been to pretend that our API versions don't exist, from a user
> perspective. We need to stop doing this and force users to think about
> what they are doing when they interact with our API.
> 
> It seems to me we have a few options here:
> 
> 1) Default the python client and CLI to the earliest supported version.
> This will never break users by default.
> 
> 2) Default the python client and CLI to use the special version
> 'latest'. This will always use the latest API version, and always
> break people when a new server version (that is not backwards
> compatible) is deployed.
> 
> 3) Do what Nova does[1]. Default CLI to latest and python client to
> earliest. This assumes that CLI is typically used for one-time commands
> (and it isn't a big deal if we break a one-off command once), and the
> python client is used for applications.

Actually what Nova is doing is slight different than this, the CLI will
default to "latest" on the server. There will be an extra round trip to
figure out what that is. And the CLI will (long term) just not present
commands that aren't available at the server level you are talking to.

Consider the CLI an auto negotiating microversion application of the
python API client. And, realistically, should solve some of the issues
of people running "nova foo" and getting cryptic errors from the server
when they are hitting an old version of Nova that doesn't know how to foo.

So the CLI should actually break less often, and will expose the most
functionality you can get out of your cloud.

	-Sean

-- 
Sean Dague
http://dague.net