Open Stack

Sorin Sbarnea <ssbarnea at redhat.com> writes:

> I would like to re-raise an older question: what can we do to avoid
> using human-unfriendly URLs for our build logs?

When was this question previously asked?

> The current setup lead us to some URLs that seems more like a way to
> test client limitations.

What limitations?

> I know that we use object storage from various providers but that
> should not be an excuse for having more human urls, maybe even using
> our own domains.
> Using a CDN does not require ugly logs urls, that is for sure.
>
>
> One random example (not even the worst):
> https://27171abe9707251ada06-40d76dc3f646b86e4453b642950e6efd.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/729996/2/check/tox-py35/2c5d394/
>
> Only the domain is >70 chars long, why not having something like logN.opendev.org instead?

Several of our storage providers have unique requirements, including one
which serves data from hundreds of unpredictable domains.

For a more complete understanding of the requirements leading to our
current system, you may want to read this message (and the message it
links to):

  http://lists.zuul-ci.org/pipermail/zuul-discuss/2018-July/000501.html

> Current URLs are backend urls, something that was not designed to be facing the consumer.

I agree.  The URLs that we report to the end user go to the Zuul
dashboard, and we encourage and expect users to browse logs via that
method.  It may then link to direct access to individual log files
(especially files it can't display), but that would only be after the
user has visited OpenDev Zuul's dashboard and will know they are at the
right place (to address your point below).

> How does someone have to guess that this url is linked to openstack of
> opendev in any way? They would have to trust me that it does not
> include a magic blob that would highjack their browser. It is not
> uncommon for me to raise bugs to other opensource projects that never
> heard of zuul. Maybe if we start serving our logs in more friendly
> way, we can also market Zuul CI/CD better.
>
> Why it matters:
>
> - I often browse various log files, even on a hires desktop monitor I
> am unable to read the filename of the log because the window barely
> fits the domain name alone. Not even the changeset seems to fit the
> visible part of the url
> - we need to share links to logs, long ones are impose additional
> problems, including splitting on irc.
> - smaller screens

I agree with all of those points, which is why we have focused on making
the log browser in the dashboard as pleasant and functional as possible.
If you're not being linked to it, or are not using it, I'd love to know
why.  Improving that is the best way to make Zuul more marketable as you
suggest (after all, if OpenDev sets up a complex system to mask the
domain names of log services, that's not necessarily something other
Zuul users can do).

-Jim