Open Stack

Hi All,

I'm working to get a strategy in place for delivery of OpenStack snaps.
Below I've outlined an initial strategy, and I'd like to get your input.

I'm particularly interested in input from snap folks of course, but also
from projects that install OpenStack and may want to be involved in snap
CI/gating (ie. Ansible, Puppet, Charms, etc).


First a quick background of snaps, tracks, channels, and versions (skip to
"Strategy" if you're already familiar with these concepts):

Snaps
---------
If you're not familiar with OpenStack snaps, see James Pages' intro at:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-January/109743.html
And if you'd like to just tip your toes in the water quickly, you can give
the openstackclients snap a try:
https://javacruft.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/snap-install-openstackclients/

Tracks
---------
Snaps have the concept of tracks, which allow for publishing different
series of software (ie. newton, ocata, pike would be separate tracks). In
each track, you can publish a snap to any of the 4 channels based on how
stable it is.

Channels
-------------
Snaps can be published to 4 different channels:
* edge:  for your most recent changes, probably untested
* beta:  used to provide preview releases of tested changes
* candidate:  used to vet uploads that should require no further code
changes before moving to stable
* stable:  what most users will consume, stable and tested

Version
----------
Snaps include metadata where the software version can be specified.

For more details on tracks, channels, and versions, see:
https://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/channels


Strategy
-----------
Ok on to the strategy. Below I've outlined a proposed strategy for
delivering snaps to the 4 different channels based on the level of testing
they've undergone. Long-term we'd like to see the majority of this process
automated, therefore the strategy I describe here is the end goal (and
hence my overuse of "auto-").

Track Strategy
--------------------
pike:  auto-publish to pike channels according to channel strategy
ocata -> latest [0]:  auto-publish to latest (ocata) channels according to
channel strategy
newton: auto-publish to newton channels according to channel strategy
mitaka: auto-publish to mitaka channels according to channel strategy
[0] The 'latest' track is the default for users when they install a snap.
Therefore the 'latest' track will always include the latest stable release.

New repo in support of channel strategy
-----------------------------------------------------
snap-releases:
In order to enable channel testing, and publishing, of a known good set of
snaps across OpenStack projects, I'd like to create a new 'snap-releases'
repo. This would be a simple repo of yaml mappings, similar to [1], that
would contain the current tracks/channels/versions for candidate and stable
channels. For example, the snap-releases/ocata/cinder file may have
'candidate: 9.1.1' and 'stable: 9.0.0'.
[1] https://github.com/openstack/releases/tree/master/deliverables

Channel Strategy
-------------------------
edge: each snap is auto-published to edge on every upstream commit
1) edge stage is triggered by each new upstream commit
2) version field is auto-populated with short git hash or pbr version
3) auto-publish snap to edge channel
notes:
* unit tests will have already passed on upstream gate by this time and
prior to all future stages (and snaps don't apply any new patches)
* voting projects may want to vote more often than beta releases but voting
on every edge update seems overboard; they could also vote on individual
snap repo changes but they may be seldom.

beta: each snap is auto-published to beta on every upstream stable point
release or development milestone
1) beta stage is triggered by new upstream release tar, e.g. cinder newton
watches for 9.x.x
2) version field auto-populated with release version, e.g. for cinder,
version=9.1.1
3) auto-open launchpad bug for SRU (stable release update)
4) auto-publish snap to beta channel
5) auto-propose snap-releases gerrit review to change candidate version;
for example:
- candidate: 9.0.0, stable: 9.0.0
+ candidate: 9.1.1, stable: 9.0.0
6) voting projects smoke test, and vote, with this snap from beta, and all
other snaps from candidate
7) SRU bug auto-updated with results of review
8) human interaction required if tests fail and may require fixed snap to
be re-published

candidate: each snap is auto-published to candidate after successful
testing of beta
1) candidate stage is triggered when snap-releases gerrit review for
candidate is merged
2) auto-publish snap to candidate channel
3) SRU bug tagged with verification-needed
4) auto-propose snap-releases gerrit review to change stable version; for
example:
- candidate: 9.1.1, stable: 9.0.0
+ candidate: 9.1.1, stable: 9.1.1
5) voting projects run, and vote, with this snap from candidate, and all
other snaps from stable
6) SRU bug auto-tagged verification-done or verfication-failed based on
snap-releases gerrit review
7) human interaction required if tests fail and may require fixed snap to
be re-published

stable: each snap is auto-published to stable after successful testing of
candidate and snap has lived in candidate channel for 7 days [2]
1) stable stage is triggered when snap-releases gerrit review for stable is
merged
2) auto-publish snap to stable channel and auto-close SRU bug
[2] 7 day wait doesn't apply to development release.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and I appreciate your feedback!

Regards,
Corey
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