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On Wed, May 4, 2016, at 08:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote:
> On 04/05/16 15:05 +0000, Amrith Kumar wrote:
> >I'm emailing the ML on the subject of a review ongoing in the Trove project regarding image building[1].
> >
> >TL;DR
> >
> >One of the most frequent questions that new users of Trove ask is how and where to get guest images with which to experiment with Trove, and how to build these images for themselves. While documentation about this exists in multiple places (including [2], [3]) this is still something that can do with some improvement.
> >
> >Trove currently uses diskimage-builder for building images used in testing the product and these can serve as a good basis for anyone wishing to build an image for their own use of Trove. The review [1] makes the argument for the libguestfs based approach to building images and advocates that Trove should use this instead of diskimage-builder.
> 
> At the summit we discussed the possibility of providing an implementation
> that
> would allow for both DIB and libguestfs to be used but to give priority
> to DIB.
> Since there's no real intention of just switching tools at this point, I
> believe
> it'd be good to amend the spec so that it doesn't mention libguestfs
> should be
> used instead of DiB.
> 
> The goal at this stage is to provide both and help these move forward.
> 
> >I believe that a broader discussion of this is required and I appreciate Greg Haynes' proposal at the design summit to have this discussion on the ML. I took the action item to bring this discussion to the ML.
> >
> >Details follow ...
> >
> >Before going further, I will state my views on these matters.
> >
> >1. It is important for the Trove project to do things quickly to make it easier for end users who wish to use Trove and who wish to build their own images. I am not concerned what tool or tools a person will use to build these images.

++. One of the biggest issues I see users of DIB hit is ease of use for
'just make me an image, I don't care about twiddling knobs'. A wrapper
script in trove is one way to help with this, but I am sure there are
other solutions as well... maybe by rethinking some of our fear about
using elements as entry points to an image build, or by simply making
element's with better defaults.

> >
> >2. If we provide multiple alternatives to image building as part of the Trove project, we should make sure that images built with all sets of tools are equivalent and usable interchangeably. Failing to do this will make it harder for users to use Trove because we will be providing them with a false choice (i.e. the alternatives aren't really alternatives). This is harder than it sounds given the combination of tools, operating systems, and the source(s) from which you can get database software.
> 
> Maintaining both in the long run will be harder especially because, as
> you
> mentioned, the output must be usable interchangeably. However, I think
> we're at
> a point, based on the comments in [1] made by Pino Toscano, Luigi Toscano
> and
> some other folks that it'd be beneficial for us to have this discussion
> and to
> also experiment/test other options.
> 
> The Sahara team seems to be going in a direction that differs with the
> one used
> by the infra team and the one we're headed to (although they overlap in
> some
> areas).
> 

I would highly recommend against having two sets of image building code
for Trove - given DIB's current design there should not be any need for
this and there's a HUGE downside to maintaining two sets of code to do
the same thing in-tree. Ideally a single set of code would be used while
being able to be run in different environments if there are mutually
exclusive requirements being proposed by users.

What seemed very apparent to me in the summit session is that there are
a set of issues for Trove relating to image building, mostly relating to
reliability and ease of use. There was no one who even mentioned let
alone strongly cared about the issues which actually differentiate the
existing DIB build process from libguestfs (which is isolation). If that
has changed for some reason, then my recommendation would be to use a
tool like virt-dib which will allow for a single image building code
base while solving all the raised issues in the spec. I suspect when
this is tried out the downsides to booting a VM will highly outweigh the
benefits for almost all users (especially in trove's gate), but if the
libguestfs docs are to be believed this should be trivial to try out.


> >3. Trove already has elements for all supported databases using DIB in the trove-integration project but these elements are not packaged for customer use. Making them usable by customers is a relatively small effort including providing a wrapper script (derived from redstack[4]) and providing an element to install the guest agent software from a fixed location in addition to the development and testing version that is better suited to Trove development [5] and [6].
> >
> >4. My comments on various patch sets in the review[1].
> >
> >I agree with Monty and Greg Haynes that we should understand the deficiencies if any in DIB, and if it is in fact the case that they are "intractable/unsolvable", we should switch toolchains. This discussion should include issues faced by the Trove team as well as other teams that may have faced problems with DIB (such as the sahara team who described some of them in the past).
> 
> ++
> 
> Agreed with the above. I'm think collaboration should be the preferred
> way. I
> don't think I've enough technical insight on this topic to provide a
> detailed
> list of things that are good/bad on either of these tools but I wanted to
> mention that I believe providing support for both in the short run is
> good for
> us and it helps to make a better decision on what tool works best for the
> project.

Rewriting image building code in order to find out if we want to use a
tool seems completely backwards. Obviously, if some external team wants
to do this there's nothing stopping them, but what we should focus on
are what problems actually effect out user base and what we can do to
solve them. We should *not* be focusing on finding ways to support
various image building frameworks without a clear benefit to doing so.

> 
> There's someone willing to do the job and spend sometime doing the
> research.
> This same person will provide feedback in addition to the one already
> provided
> in [1].
> 
> Sorry for not providing much technical details now but I did want to
> share the
> above. Thanks for starting this thread, I believe this discussion in the
> ML will
> be beneficial.
> 
> Flavio
> 
> >Thanks,
> >
> >-amrith
> >
> >
> >[1] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/295274/
> >[2] http://docs.openstack.org/developer/trove/dev/building_guest_images.html
> >[3] https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/diskimage-builder/tree/README.rst#writing-an-element
> >[4] http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/redstack
> >[5] http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/files/trove-guest.systemd.conf
> >[6] http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/trove-integration/tree/scripts/files/trove-guest.upstart.conf
> >
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> 
> -- 
> @flaper87
> Flavio Percoco
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