Open Stack

On 05/11/2016 09:50 PM, Eric Larson wrote:
>
> Flavio Percoco writes:
>
>> On 11/05/16 09:47 -0500, Dean Troyer wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Flavio Percoco <flavio at redhat.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> [language mixing bits were here]
>>>
>>>
>>>    The above is my main concern with this proposal. I've    mentioned
>>> this in the upstream review and I'm glad to have    found it here as
>>> well. The community impact of this change    is perhaps not being
>>> discussed enough and I believe, in the    long run, it'll bite us.
>>>
>>>
>>> Agreed, but to do nothing instead is so not what we are about. The
>>> change from integrated/incubated to Big Tent was done to address some
>>> issues knowing we did not have all of the answers up front and would
>>> learn some things along the way. We did learn some things, both good
>>> and bad.
>>>
>>> I do believe that we can withstand the impact of a new language,
>>> particularly when we do it intentionally and knowing where some of
>>> the pitfalls are. Also, the specific request is coming from the
>>> oldest of all OpenStack projects, and one that has a history of not
>>> making big changes without _really_ good reasons. Yes it opens a
>>> door, but it will be opened with what I believe to be a really solid
>>> model to build upon in other parts of the OpenStack community.  I
>>> would MUCH rather do it this way then with a new Go-only project that
>>> is joining OpenStack from scratch in more than just the
>>> implementation language.
>>
>>
>> So, one thing that was mentioned during the last TC meeting is to
>> decide this in a project basis. Don't open the door entirely but let
>> projects sign up for this.  This will give us a more contained growth
>> as far as projects with go-code go but it does mean we'll have to do a
>> technical analysis on every project willing to sign up and it kinda
>> goes against the principles of the big tent.
>>
>>>
>>>    The feedback from the Horizon community has been that it's    been
>>> impossible to avoid a community split and that's what    I'd like to
>>> avoid.
>>>
>>>
>>> I do think part of this is also due to the differences in the problem
>>> domain of client/browser-side and server-side. I believe there is a
>>> similar issue with <any-language> devs writing SQL, the overlap in
>>> expertise between the two is way smaller than we all wish it was.
>>
>> Exactly! This separation of domains is the reason why opening the door
>> for JS code was easier. The request was for browser apps that can't be
>> written in Python.
>>
>>> And for the specific Python-Golang overlap, it feels to me like more
>>> Python devs have (at least talked about) working in Go than in other
>>> newish languages. There are worse choices to test the waters with.
>>
>> Just to stress this a bit more, I don't think the problem is the
>> language per se. There are certainly technical issues related to it
>> (packaging, CI, etc) but the main discussion is currently going around
>> the impact this change will have in the community and other areas. I'm
>> sure we can figure the technical issues out.
>>
>
> One thing to consider regarding the community's ability to task switch
> is how Go is much easier than other languages and techniques. For
> example, one common tactic people suggest when Python becomes too slow
> is to rewrite the slow parts in C. In designate's case, rewriting the
> dns wire protocol aspects in C could be beneficial, but it would be very
> difficult as well. We would need to write an implementation that is able
> to safely parse dns wire format in a reasonably thread safe fashion that
> also will work well when those threads have been patched by eventlet,
> all while writing C code that is compatible with Python internals.
>
> To contrast that, the go POC was able to use a well tested go DNS
> library and implement the same documented interface that was then
> testable via the same functional tests. It also allowed an extremely
> simple deployment and had a minimal impact for our CI systems. Finally,
> as other go code has been written on our small team, getting Python
> developers up to speed has been trivial. Memory management, built in
> concurrency primitives, and similar language constructs have made using
> Go feel natural.

This is pretty subjective, I would say. I personally don't feel Go 
(especially its approach to error handling) any natural (at least no 
more than Rust or Scala, for example). If familiarity for Python 
developers is an argument here, mastering Cython or making OpenStack run 
on PyPy must be much easier for a random Python developer out there to 
seriously bump the performance. And it would not require introducing a 
completely new language to the picture.

>
> This experience is different from JavaScript because there are very
> specific silos between the UI and the backend. I'd expect that, even
> though JavaScript is an accepted language in OpenStack, writing a
> node.js service would prevent a whole host of new complexity the project
> would similarly debate. Fortunately, on a technical level, I believe we
> can try Go without its requirements putting a large burden on the CI
> team resources.
>
> Eric
>
>> Flavio
>>
>>> dt
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Dean Troyer dtroyer at gmail.com
>
>
> --
>
> Eric Larson         | eric.larson at rackspace.com Software Developer |
> Cloud DNS | OpenStack Designate Rackspace Hosting   | Austin, Texas
>
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