Open Stack

Excerpts from Michał Jastrzębski's message of 2017-05-16 08:20:17 -0700:
> On 16 May 2017 at 08:12, Doug Hellmann <doug at doughellmann.com> wrote:
> > Excerpts from Michał Jastrzębski's message of 2017-05-16 06:52:12 -0700:
> >> On 16 May 2017 at 06:20, Flavio Percoco <flavio at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> > On 16/05/17 14:08 +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Flavio Percoco wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> From a release perspective, as Doug mentioned, we've avoided releasing
> >> >>> projects
> >> >>> in any kind of built form. This was also one of the concerns I raised
> >> >>> when
> >> >>> working on the proposal to support other programming languages. The
> >> >>> problem of
> >> >>> releasing built images goes beyond the infrastructure requirements. It's
> >> >>> the
> >> >>> message and the guarantees implied with the built product itself that are
> >> >>> the
> >> >>> concern here. And I tend to agree with Doug that this might be a problem
> >> >>> for us
> >> >>> as a community. Unfortunately, putting your name, Michal, as contact
> >> >>> point is
> >> >>> not enough. Kolla is not the only project producing container images and
> >> >>> we need
> >> >>> to be consistent in the way we release these images.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Nothing prevents people for building their own images and uploading them
> >> >>> to
> >> >>> dockerhub. Having this as part of the OpenStack's pipeline is a problem.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> I totally subscribe to the concerns around publishing binaries (under
> >> >> any form), and the expectations in terms of security maintenance that it
> >> >> would set on the publisher. At the same time, we need to have images
> >> >> available, for convenience and testing. So what is the best way to
> >> >> achieve that without setting strong security maintenance expectations
> >> >> for the OpenStack community ? We have several options:
> >> >>
> >> >> 1/ Have third-parties publish images
> >> >> It is the current situation. The issue is that the Kolla team (and
> >> >> likely others) would rather automate the process and use OpenStack
> >> >> infrastructure for it.
> >> >>
> >> >> 2/ Have third-parties publish images, but through OpenStack infra
> >> >> This would allow to automate the process, but it would be a bit weird to
> >> >> use common infra resources to publish in a private repo.
> >> >>
> >> >> 3/ Publish transient (per-commit or daily) images
> >> >> A "daily build" (especially if you replace it every day) would set
> >> >> relatively-limited expectations in terms of maintenance. It would end up
> >> >> picking up security updates in upstream layers, even if not immediately.
> >> >>
> >> >> 4/ Publish images and own them
> >> >> Staff release / VMT / stable team in a way that lets us properly own
> >> >> those images and publish them officially.
> >> >>
> >> >> Personally I think (4) is not realistic. I think we could make (3) work,
> >> >> and I prefer it to (2). If all else fails, we should keep (1).
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Agreed #4 is a bit unrealistic.
> >> >
> >> > Not sure I understand the difference between #2 and #3. Is it just the
> >> > cadence?
> >> >
> >> > I'd prefer for these builds to have a daily cadence because it sets the
> >> > expectations w.r.t maintenance right: "These images are daily builds and not
> >> > certified releases. For stable builds you're better off building it
> >> > yourself"
> >>
> >> And daily builds are exactly what I wanted in the first place:) We
> >> probably will keep publishing release packages too, but we can be so
> >> called 3rd party. I also agree [4] is completely unrealistic and I
> >> would be against putting such heavy burden of responsibility on any
> >> community, including Kolla.
> >>
> >> While daily cadence will send message that it's not stable, truth will
> >> be that it will be more stable than what people would normally build
> >> locally (again, it passes more gates), but I'm totally fine in not
> >> saying that and let people decide how they want to use it.
> >>
> >> So, can we move on with implementation?
> >
> > I don't want the images published to docker hub. Are they still useful
> > to you if they aren't published?
> 
> What do you mean? We need images available...whether it's dockerhub,
> infra-hosted registry or any other way to have them, we need to be
> able to have images that are available and fresh without building.
> Dockerhub/quay.io is least problems for infra team/resources.

There are 2 separate concerns.

The first concern is whether this is a good idea at all, from a
policy perspective. Do we have the people to maintain the images,
track CVEs, etc.? Do we have the response time to update or remove
bad images? Can we, as a community, actually staff the support to
an appropriate level? Or, can we clearly communicate that we do not
support the images for production use and effectively avoid having
someone start to rely on them?

The second concern is whether we have the compute resources to build the
images, publish them, etc. The only aspect of that I'm actually
concerned about is the storage space needed. Talking about that is
irrelevant until we settle the first question, though.

To address the first concern, I'm trying to draw a distinction
between publishing signed images to dockerhub (where anyone can
easily find and use them) and having some sort of self-hosted
solution for those images to be usable in our CI system (where they
wouldn't exactly be "obscure" but where they wouldn't just show up
in standard searches). Is it possible to have that distinction?

Doug