Open Stack

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 5:00 PM, Lance Haig <lnhaig at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Lance,

Thanks for starting this. Comments inline.

> As we know the heat-templates repository has become out of date in some
> respects and also has been difficult to be maintained from a community
> perspective.

While it has been out of date, I'm not sure it's because it's been
difficult. We just don't have the manpower or didn't dedicate enough
time to it.

> For me the repository is quiet confusing with different styles that are used
> to show certain aspects and other styles for older template examples.
>
> This I think leads to confusion and perhaps many people who give up on heat
> as a resource as things are not that clear.
>
> From discussions in other threads and on the IRC channel I have seen that
> there is a need to change things a bit.
>
>
> This is why I would like to start the discussion that we rethink the
> template example repository.
>
> I would like to open the discussion with mys suggestions.
>
> We need to differentiate templates that work on earlier versions of heat
> that what is the current supported versions.
>
> I have suggested that we create directories that relate to different
> versions so that you can create a stable version of examples for the heat
> version and they should always remain stable for that version and once it
> goes out of support can remain there.
> This would mean people can find their version of heat and know these
> templates all work on their version

So, a couple of things:
* Templates have a version field. This clearly shows on which version
that template ought to work.
* Except when some resources changed (neutron loadbalancer, some
ceilometer stuff), old templates should still work. If they don't,
it's a bug. Obviously we won't fix it on unmaintained versions, but we
work really hard at maintaining compatibility. I'd be surprised to
find templates that are really broken.

It'd probably be nice to update all templates to the latest supported
version. But we don't remove old versions of templates, so it's also
good to keep them around, if updating the versions doesn't bring
anything new.

> We should consider adding a docs section that that includes training for new
> users.
>
> I know that there are documents hosted in the developer area and these could
> be utilized but I would think having a documentation section in the
> repository would be a good way to keep the examples and the documents in the
> same place.
> This docs directory could also host some training for new users and old ones
> on new features etc.. In a similar line to what is here in this repo
> https://github.com/heat-extras/heat-tutorial

I'd rather see documentation in the main repository. It's nice to have
some stuff in heat-templates, but there is little point if the doc
isn't published anywhere. Maybe we could have links?

> We should include examples form the default hooks e.g. ansible salt etc...
> with SoftwareDeployments.
>
> We found this quiet helpful for new users to understand what is possible.

We have those AFAIU:
https://github.com/openstack/heat-templates/tree/master/hot/software-config/example-templates

> We should make sure that the validation running against the templates runs
> without ignoring errors.
>
> This was noted in IRC that some errors were ignored as the endpoints or
> catalog was not available. It would be good to have some form of headless
> catalog server that tests can be run against so that developers of templates
> can validate before submitting patches.

Yep that's a good idea, I've written a patch here:
https://review.openstack.org/465860

Thanks,

-- 
Thomas