Open Stack

Hi,

As some of you already know, after some difficult time after I left my
past employer, I'm back! And I don't plan on giving-up, ever... :)

The repositories:
=================
Today, it's my pleasure to announce today the general availability of
Debian packages for the Queens OpenStack release. These are available in
official Debian Sid (as usual), and also as a Stretch (unofficial)
backports. These packages have been tested successfully with Tempest.

Here's the address of the (unofficial) backport repositories:

deb http://stretch-queens.debian.net/debian
				stretch-queens-backports main
deb-src http://stretch-queens.debian.net/debian
				stretch-queens-backports main
deb http://stretch-queens.debian.net/debian
				stretch-queens-backports-nochange main
deb-src http://stretch-queens.debian.net/debian
				stretch-queens-backports-nochange main

The repository key is here:
wget -O - http://stretch-queens.debian.net/debian/dists/pubkey.gpg | \
	apt-key add

Please note that stretch-queens.debian.net is just a IN CNAME pointer to
the server of my new employer, Infomaniak, and that the real server name is:

stretch-queens.infomaniak.ch

So, that server is of course located in Geneva, Switzerland. Thanks to
my employer for sponsoring that server, and allowing me to build these
packages during my work time.

What's new in this release
==========================
1/ Python 3
-----------
The new stuff is ... the full switch Python 3!

As much as I understand, apart from Gentoo, no other distribution
switched to Python 3 yet. Both RDO and Ubuntu are planning to do it for
Rocky (at least that's what I've been told). So once more, Debian is on
the edge. :)

While there is still dual Python 2/3 support for clients (with priority
to Python 3 for binaries in /usr/bin), all services have been switched
to Py3.

Building the packages worked surprisingly well. I was secretly expecting
more failures. The only real collateral damage is:

- manila-ui (no Py3 support upstream)

As the Horizon package switched to Python 3, it's unfortunately
impossible to keep these plugins to use Python 2, and therefore,
manila-ui is now (from a Debian packaging standpoint) RC buggy, and
shall be removed from Debian Testing.

Also, Django 2 will sooner or later be the only option in Debian Sid.
It'd be great if Horizon's patches could be merged, and plugins adapt ASAP.

Also, a Neutron plugins isn't released upstream yet for Queens, and
since the Neutron package switched to Python 3, the old Pike plugin
packages are also considered RC buggy (and it doesn't build with Queens
anyway):
- networking-mlnx

The faith of the above packages is currently unknown. Hopefully, there's
going to be upstream work to make them in a packageable state (which
means, for today's Debian, Python 3.6 compatible), if not, there will be
no choice but to remove them from Debian.

As for networking-ovs-dpdk, it needs more work on OVS itself to support
dpdk, and I still haven't found the time for it yet.

As a more general thing, it'd be nice if there was Python 3.6 in the
gate. Hopefully, this will happen with Bionic release and the infra
switching to it. It's been a reoccurring problem though, that Debian Sid
is always experiencing issues before the other distros (ie: before
Ubuntu, for example), because it gets updates first. So I'd really love
to have Sid as a possible image in the infra, so we could use it for
(non-voting) gate.

2/ New debconf unified templates
--------------------------------
The Debconf templates used to be embedded within each packages. This
isn't the case anymore, all of them are now stored in
openstack-pkg-tools if they are not service specific. Hopefully, this
will help having a better coverage for translations. The postinst
scripts can also optionally create the service tenant and user
automatically. The system also does less by default (ie: it wont even
read your configuration files if the user doesn't explicitly asks for
config handling), API endpoint can now use FQDN and https as well.

3/ New packages/services
------------------------
We've added Cloudkitty and Vitrage. Coming soon: Octavia and Vitrage.

Unfortunately, at this point, cloudkitty-dashboard still contains
non-free files (ie: embedded minified javascripts). Worse, some of them
cannot even be identified (I couldn't find out what version from
upstream it was). So even if this package is ready, I can't upload it to
Debian in such state.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)