Open Stack

Hi,

FYI, I'm the person behind all Debian packages of OpenStack. I'm working
full-time on packaging OpenStack for Debian, and I've been doing so for
the last few years (I started to get involved in the Cactus release,
which is years ago now...). It's been a long time I wanted to reply to
this thread, and I'm finally finding the time in (the very long trip on)
the plane today.

tl;dr: The generation of config files is a non-issue which doesn't need
any tox or pip stuff. Please join me in the packaging effort in Debian
and let's work together.

Longer version:

Before I start quoting and replying, I'd like to point out a few things.
For many years, I've been trying to push for working on packages within
the community, with Debian in mind. It is my view that all the work has
to happen in Debian, since Ubuntu derives from it, and that this is
where everything happens anyway.

During this last Juno cycle, I've done absolutely *ALL* of the Python
module dependency packaging by myself, with the help of nobody. Zero,
nada, black-hole help from anyone. Even guys from Canonical didn't help,
they just synched absolutely all of the packages I made into the last
version of Ubuntu, and that's it. When I complained about it to both
Mark Shuttleworth and James Page, then the answer was "Thanks!!!".

It's been a long long time that I would like to be able to track trunk
in my package git repositories, and be able to do gating using packages.
But given the amount of work that it would represent, and the fact that
I'd be alone working on all of that, I currently gave up, until the
company that currently pays for my salary (Mirantis, since last
September) gets someone else on-board so that we may finally be a team
of more than a single person.

At the same time, I know that on the Red Hat side, they are only "2.75
persons" (if you count 0.75 for Alan Pevec, which is also doing some
Keystone work). I'd also consider this as understaffed.

So, when I have heard from my colleagues that a small group of people
from the operators mailing list thought it was a good idea to do another
set of packages of their own, I found it both amusing, irritating, and
huge time waste.

Why do you think it's a good idea to restart doing the work of
distributions by yourself? Why not joining a common effort?

I'd be more than happy to have some more contributors. We could open a
new branch on git.debian.org so that we track stuff from trunk (let's
call it debian/trunk instead of debian/kilo?). I already have all the
infrastructure to build using Jenkins, cowbuilder, etc, and
automatically package repositories for both Debian and Ubuntu. The only
thing that would be needed would be enough workforce so that we maintain
this at the same time as trunk, and fix issues as we see them (like
adding a new {build,runtime}-dependency when there's a new one, upgrade
versions when needed, and things like that).

Note that the Debian packaging is already happening in the open on
git.debian.org (ie: service managed by http://alioth.debian.org), and it
is very easy to add new contributors.

Ok, let me quote what I've seen in this thread now...

On 12/09/2014 10:46 AM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Since somewhere around icehouse projects have started to stop shipping
> sample configuration files with their projects and instead create a
> README-sample.conf.txt that usually contains something like:
> To generate the sample nova.conf file, run the following
> command from the top level of the nova directory:
> 
> tox –egenconfig
> 
> The problem that I am running into is that tox –egenconfig now requires
> a newer version of tox than what is available for the build distro:
> [root at localhost ceilometer-2014.2.1]# tox -egenconfig
> ERROR: tox version is 1.4.2, required is at least 1.6

First of all, you do *not* need tox to generate the config files. In
fact, you should assign yourself to *not* use tox or pip when building a
package. If you follow what tox -egenconfig (by reading the tox.ini),
you will find out it does:

bash tools/config/generate_sample.sh -b . -p nova -o etc/nova

that's the only thing you need to run, not tox!

> I know I can do a pip install blah and blindly hope that I get
> everything installed locally on my build system and that I don’t install
> something that conflicts with the system but that seems like a less
> than desirable solution.

Once you figure out what command tox -egenconfig, and what the
build-dependencies are, it's actually fine.

> So how are people who are doing packaging
> handling this? Are you now building a venv per package for tox just to
> generate a sample configuration?

Last time I did use a VM to figure out what was doing on with "tox
-egenconfig". Then once it was done, I just copied the nova.conf file
into the debian folder of the nova package, though next time, I'll just
do things properly like I just wrote above: find out the correct
build-depends, and hard-wire the generation of the /conf.sample file.

Though you also have to realize that a generated config file isn't so
much useable by our users. That's not enough. What I ship in Debian is
better than just all directives that tox -egenconfig spits out. The
default nova.conf in Debian has sensible defaults, comments, etc.

> Shouldn't this be part of the python
> build/install steps per project?
> 
> It seems redhat/rdo is simply including a sample configuration that they
> generated somehow.  
> 
> What are you other packagers doing?

You may want to use the words "package maintainers" rather than
"packagers". It is as if you were using "programator" or something...
Yes, it's a common mistake that everyone within OpenStack seems to
insist on doing.

> Also, is it just me or does this seem wrong?  Most of the commits that
> made this change seem to indicate it was because the sample config file
> was separate from the project and that it was breaking gate when it
> wasn't kept up to date.  Shouldn't this be something that each project
> generates?  This seemed to work for 8 previous releases – now its too
> difficult?  I don’t get the motivations behind this change.

The motivation is to have always config files which are up-to-date, and
not just rely on whatever is in the Git, plus issues with libraries (see
below).

On 12/09/2014 11:23 AM, Fischer, Matt wrote:
> Not only is the sample
> config a useful reference, but having it in a git repo allows me to
> see when new options were added or defaults were changed.

Yeah, though if you've been doing packages for a long time, you do have
this information. At least, I do have it for all the last stable releases.

On 12/09/2014 11:23 AM, Fischer, Matt wrote:
> I don’t really know the reason. This is one of my larger
> annoyances as an operator

As a package maintainer, I found that the type of config file from
projects like neutron is a *way* more annoying. It's not even parse-able
by default, things that it sets are sometimes the default (and
therefore, it should be commented-out, but it's not), some options
simply don't work (ever tried to remove the "gre" driver, just for
fun?), and loads of this kind of issues. I very much prefer Nova's approach.

> Maybe someone can setup a cron job to do a pull, build the sample
> configs and post them to git hub every day.

What would work a way better would be to do that job when doing "python
setup.py install", though it's also fine to let package maintainer deal
with it. At least, I'm happy to do it the way I feel right.

On 12/09/2014 12:01 PM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> [...] sample config and replace it with some tox script. Which may or
> may not run on your current operating system without going to pip to
> get newer versions of stuff.

Excuse my words, but that's bullshit. If your operating system doesn't
have a version high enough for one of your build-dependency, then this
should be fixed. It should be your work as a package maintainer. For
example, if we need a newer version of tox (which is *not* the case, as
tox isn't really needed for generating config files), then the tox
package should be updated. It's as simple as that. And if you want this
to happen, then I would strongly suggest you to get involved in Debian
and/or Fedora packaging, because that's where things happen.

On 12/09/2014 12:01 PM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> I see that whats being said is that a  valid sample configuration file
> depends on the version of the other dependent libraries that are
> installed on the system as well.  I assume this is talking about
> different versions of oslo.config and oslo.messaging take different
> configuration options and as such we can't generate a generic sample
> config file because we don’t know what versions of dependent libraries
> you actually have installed.

Let me give you an example. In most (if not *all* projects) you will
find some [keystone:auth_token] section. These are directly derived from
what's in python-keystoneclient. Indeed, the output .conf.sample file
will depend on that... Now let's say the maintainers of
python-keystoneclient would like to update something (let's say, update
a comment on one of the directives, or simply a *new* directive),
obviously, you want that change to propagate on all projects, but *only*
if we have a new version of python-keystoneclient.

Obviously, this is a management issue for package maintainers, because
you have to make sure that you rebuild the packages *after* all
libraries have been updated. But lucky, considering the fact that we do
a bunch of RC releases before the final stable versions, that's how it
practically happens, without even needing to care about it.

Though if we are to build from trunk in a CI/CD way, some kind of
trigger mechanisms have to happen. Like, touching any option on any lib
would have to trigger the rebuild of all OpenStack projects and validate
against the rebuilt packages.

On 12/09/2014 12:01 PM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> Just because some options change depending
> on the oslo.config version doesn't mean the configuration options that
> are specific to that project change as well…

Correct. The issue isn't in oslo.config, but in all libraries that
projects are using. I gave above an example with keystoneclient, but the
more we're splitting things into libraries, the more we have such
examples to give (another example could be the [database]/connection
directive...). I didn't take the time to survey it though, but I'm sure
it must be an increasing number of libraries that are concerned.

On 12/09/2014 12:01 PM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> The problem that I have with this change is
> that in order to package a sample configuration I need to basically do
> the following:
> 1.) get the current build/commit run
> 2.) run python build

No, you *never* need to care about this in the context of a package
building (at least in Debian, this may happen by itself with the dh auto
sequencer).

> 3.) strip away the relevant built parts of the package

I never did have to "strip away" anything. What are you talking about
exactly here?

> 4.) install on the build machine all the python runtime deps that I
> am going to need for this package

You don't need to do that. This is taken care of by your
build-dependencies (which btw are not trivial to get right). And your
build environment (cowbuilder in my case, but maybe sbuild on the buildd
network or many others) will install them automatically. If some
(build-)dependencies are missing, just fix that...

> 5.) install tox and other packages as needed to generate a sample
> configuration

Same as above: this is taken care of by your build-dependencies, you
should *never* need to install anything manually. And tox isn't needed,
*ever*.

> 6.) generate sample config
> 7.) build a new package with the exact same requirements as what I
> installed in step 4
> 8.) add sample configuration generated in step 6 to the package.

Why wouldn't the process of building your package include building a
sample configuration file? I don't get your reasoning here...

> Then I need to make sure I also package all of the python-versions
> that was used in step 4, making sure that I don’t have conflicting
> system level dependencies from other openstack projects.

Of course all build-dependencies and runtime dependencies need to be
packaged, and available in the system. That's the basics of packaging,
no? Making sure this happens is about 90% of my Debian packaging work.
So far, I haven't seen anyone in the community volunteering to help on
packaging Python modules. Why not focus on that rather than wasting your
time on non-issues such as generating sample config files? I'd
appreciate a lot some help you know...

On 12/09/2014 12:01 PM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> I don’t think its too much to ask for each project to include a
> script that will build a venv that includes tox and the other
> relevant deps to build the sample configuration.

A venv, seriously?!?

No, it's not that. What need to happen is to have an easy and *OpenStack
unified way* of building the config files, and preferably with things
integrated directly in a oslo.config new command line. Not just a black
magic tox thing, but something documented. But I believe that's already
the direction that is being taken (did you notice
/usr/bin/oslo-config-generator ?).

On 12/10/2014 01:02 AM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> So a few things to point out in order to even get tox -egenconfig I
> had to update the system packages versions using pip.

If you are being serious about packaging, then don't use pip. If you
don't have a tox version high enough (again, that's not the case that
you need tox to generate nova.conf.sample), then you should package that
version if it's not available for your system.

On 12/10/2014 01:02 AM, Kris G. Lindgren wrote:
> Since we have other python
> packages using virtualenv I have no idea if the updated venvironment
> package is going to break those systems or not.  So the included
> script/command is already a barrier to getting a sample config.

Again, you don't need tox.

> If the configuration is so dynamic that getting a different version
> of oslo.config could generate a sample configuration that wont work
> on my system then how am I suppose to deal with:
> Tox installed version:
> oslo.config-1.5.0

Which is why you should never use tox/pip when building packages.

> Also python-libvrit failed to build because I don¹t have libvrit
> installed on this system.  So am I to assume that there are no
> libvrit options (which we both know is false)?
> Now I can get a example config - that wont work with my system - per
> what everyone else has been saying.  Also, at what point would the
> average user just say "F it"? - because at the point I feel like if I
> was an average user - I would be there right now.

Yeah, it's annoying, but deal-able with.

On 12/10/2014 01:25 AM, Michael Dorman wrote:
> Well I think we can all agree this is an irritation.  But how are
> others  actually dealing with this problem?  (Maybe it’s less
> complicated in Ubuntu.)

Since exactly when Ubuntu people started caring about the configuration
files that they ship? Last time I checked, Nova doesn't install a
workable nova.conf by default, it only has a few directives and that's
about it.

> The sense I get is that most people using Anvil, or other custom-ish
> packaging tools, are also running config management which handles
> generating the config files, anyway.  So you don’t so much care about
> the  contents of the config file shipped with the package.

Yeah, it has been the excuse for years so that 1/ upstream project
doesn't care 2/ downstream distribution don't care 3/ users give-up on
installing by hand. I DON'T BUY THIS CRAP! And as a package maintainer,
I strongly believe that it's my duty to make packages at least a little
bit useable by default.

> Is that accurate for most people?  Or are folks doing some other
> magic to get a good config file in the packages?

No magic. Only hard work can make it happen (unfortunately, currently
limited by the time I have available, which isn't much given the amount
of work OpenStack packaging represents). The way to do things is to get
OpenStack installed (by hand, without any helper, using the package
defaults), then make sure the package ships with sensible defaults that
do work. Which is why I've been working on the "openstack-deploy"
package and scripts in Debian. Contributions are welcome there too!
Also, reading the install-guide and making sure what it recommends as
options in config files are pre-wired in the packages may help as well.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)

P.S: Matt Fischer, could you *PLEASE* stop posting with a footer that
makes you look like a fool?

On 12/09/2014 11:39 AM, Fischer, Matt wrote:
> This E-mail and any of its attachments may contain Time Warner Cable
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I am hereby notifying you: you're sending emails to a public list.
Therefore it *WILL* be reproduced, distributed, quoted, indexed, etc.,
And I challenge you (or your company) to dare threatening me again of
doing unlawful miss-handling of contents which you are willingly sending
to a public list... Should my lawyer get in touch with yours? :)